Clayton Deutsch has been a strategic advisor to PaymentWorks since our early days, bringing us decades of experience in the financial sector, most recently as CEO of Boston Private Bank.  Prior to that he was a managing director at McKinsey.  Clay brings an unrivaled perspective on what risk assessment entails and what is at stake for a company if a payments fraud gets through.  Our head of strategy and market development, Taylor Nemeth, recently sat down with Clay to discuss why it’s so difficult to solve the problem of securely and efficiently onboarding vendors, and how this problem contributes to the overall risk a company needs to manage.

Originally recorded for our initial podcast,  the conversation is excerpted below and has been edited for clarity. You can listen to the entire podcast here.

Mapping the landscape of insurance that businesses require to secure their property, assets, and employees is a massive and complex task. Policies are simultaneously hyper-specific and unintelligible; counsel and executives alike can find the paperwork confusing or obtuse.

What the FBI’s latest IC3 report tells us about cybercrime and business payments fraud

At PaymentWorks, we tend to get more excited than most people about the annual report from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). It’s a missive from the front lines of the fight against internet-based fraud – which is a major contributor to the plague of payments fraud.

Trying to maintain business-critical services while working from home comes with plenty of challenges, but telecommuting isn’t new for everyone: the Office of Financial Affairs at University of Texas, San Antonio, has been doing it since 2018. As one of the very first finance teams in higher ed to move their processes permanently off campus, they’ve learned a lot about what it takes to operate as a team when everyone is working from home. 

We sat down with Sheri Hardison, AVP for Financial Affairs and University Controller at UTSA, to talk about the benefits and challenges of operating a fully remote finance department - and what her advice is for teams who are just now making that change.

While the coronavirus pandemic is disrupting businesses all over the world, there’s one industry that’s booming: payments fraud. 

Higher education organizations are a prime target for business payments fraud. So how can procurement and AP departments secure their vendors’ data and payments? A recent PaymentWorks panel discussion highlighted the need for increased focus on managing payee identity within higher ed institutions. Here are some of the key takeaways.