Companies lose an average of five percent of their annual revenue due to occupational fraud and abuse, according to a recent survey released by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).
Marlon Cooper, managing director at Symptai Consulting Ltd., addressed the importance of businesses having certain systems in place to ensure they don't suffer such revenue losses, during a seminar yesterday at the British Colonial Hilton.
"Often times, persons within a company use their positions to destroy the company one way or the other. They abuse processes and systems, so the company are faced with those losses," he explained.
"That's completely different from those additional losses where external persons or entities also attempt to defraud a company or to get monies or services out of a company and then not pay for those services."
Cooper addressed seminar attendees on the topic "Delivering Business Value through Continued Monitoring".
"We are trying to educate the Bahamian market about how you can continuously monitor the controls within your business processes, to ensure that the business does not suffer money leakage, revenue loss and is not susceptible to fraudulent activities that may be as a result of overpayment, or payment of things that should not have occurred. We are trying to educate the public that technology is available and being used here in The Bahamas," Cooper noted.
Cooper pointed out how the National Insurance Board (NIB) is one of the major entities locally that has put a system in place to combat these issues in regards to the unemployment benefit fund.
"In addition to that, they wanted to ensure that they are able to deliver on their promise to make long-term and short-term benefit payments, and also that the contributions payments that are set to come in, come in a timely manner," he said.
With the Caseware Solution system, Cooper shared that there is a tight system of accountability.
"It monitors regular business processes, whether you are looking for duplicates of payments, your payroll process or you want to make sure that only persons who were employed are being paid."

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