Fraud Never Sleeps

Posted by Alex Wong on Sep 7, 2022 10:01:00 AM

J.P. Morgan, Chubb Insurance and PaymentWorks recently came together for an enlightening panel discussion on the state of fraud today. The bad news? Fraud isn’t going away – in fact, the FBI tells us it’s a $43 billion dollar problem. The good news: There are tangible things you can do to protect yourself and your organization.

Here are my top 3 takeaways from the discussion that will help you stay vigilant and prevent a social engineering fraud from costing your business millions.  

 

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Topics: compliance, payments fraud, insurance, ACH, business payments, banks

Vendoring 101: Live Event Recap

Posted by Angela Sarno on Aug 24, 2022 11:03:37 AM

 

Vendor Onboarding 101: How to Build a More Secure and Compliant Process

Top 3 Take-Aways from Our Live Event with AP Guru, Debra R. Richardson

We recently had the pleasure of talking to Debra R. Richardson, LLC., who is using her 20+ years of experience in AP, AR, general ledger and financial reporting for Fortune 500 companies to help AP teams implement authentication

DeborahRichardson-400x400 techniques, internal controls and best practices to prevent fraud in the vendor master file. She also has a weekly blog and hosts the podcast: “Putting the AP in hAPpy.

Thinking about moving to automation, but haven’t made the jump yet? Here are 3 actionable items that you can implement today to mitigate the risks associated with fraud and compliance and mistakes!

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Topics: compliance, AP, ACH, risk, social engineering fraud, vendor management

Vendor Impersonation Scams: A TMANY Wrap Up

Posted by Angela Sarno on Jun 14, 2022 11:21:00 AM

Last week, I had the honor of presenting at the TMANY 2022 Cash Exchange Conference alongside Christopher Arehart, SVP, First Party Product Manager, North America Financial Lines at Chubb.  We had one hour to share with treasury professionals everything we wanted them to know about vendor impersonation frauds, why they are successful, and how to address organizational risk in the vendor onboarding and management process.  (For the record, I believe Chris and I could actually speak for a solid six hours on this subject, so it was a tall order to fit it into 60 minutes!)

Screen Shot 2022-06-13 at 10.12.58 AM

For those of you who were not able to attend the exceptional TMANY event, I offer the following quick takes on our subject:

  1. A good vendor impersonation scam will be impossible for your staff to spot. (Yes, impossible).
  2. Social engineering losses are generally not covered by crime or cyber insurance policies (or if they are, they have very low limits).
  3. If you cannot audit your vendor onboarding and change process, then it’s not actually a process, and it’s likely not insurable.

Let's dig in.

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Topics: payments fraud, insurance, ACH, vendor master, risk, business payments

Verifying Vendor Information: What Does it Mean to "Verify?"

Posted by Angela Sarno on Sep 21, 2021 10:15:00 AM

In the course of building our network and our platform, we did what product people do: we talked to the market.  When it comes to the risk associated with vendor onboarding, everyone we spoke to was united.  However, when it came to how to solve it, consensus was elusive. Vendor management, AP and Procurement personnel know they should not trust banking information that arrives via email.  That is a given. To solve this most seem to focus verifying vendor banking information.  But what, exactly, does that mean?

shutterstock_1951920238How banking information gets 'verified', generally falls into these three buckets:

  1. Collecting a voided check or account info on bank letterhead
  2. Calling the vendor to confirm the change
  3. Multi levels of internal approvals for changes

All of these seem, on the surface, to be solid, but are not infallible in defending the vendor master from infiltration by fraudsters.  The devil, as they say, is in the details. If your organization is relying on any of these three ways to ensure the validity of your vendor master file's banking info, you are likely leaving holes wide enough for a fraudster to walk right in.

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Topics: payments fraud, AP, ACH, vendor master, risk

The Payments Fraud Problem No One Will Talk About (Until Now)

Posted by Angela Sarno on Aug 19, 2021 10:01:00 AM

We talk a lot (I mean A LOT) around these parts about the constant threat posed to organizations when it comes to business payments fraud.  And you can see why:

The problem is, numbers this huge can tend to make a problem seem unknowable and unsolvable.  Especially since we very rarely get to learn exactly what happened. When an organization suffers financial losses due to a fraudster, they are usually unwilling or unable to share the details publicly, so the financial community as a whole doesn’t get to learn anything that could help them to avoid the same fate. 

Until now.

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Topics: payments fraud, ACH, vendor master, risk

The ROI on Vendor Management

Posted by Angela Sarno on Aug 12, 2021 10:02:00 AM

Julie-Anne White isn't going to argue that having a clean vendor master file is more important to a company than generating sales and growing revenue. (Because it isn't.)Julie-Anne White Headshot

But that doesn't mean the financial industry veteran thinks companies should penny pinch by failing to devote resources to vendor management. (Because they shouldn't.)

We interviewed Julie-Anne on the importance of accurate vendor information for our Risky Business podcast.  You can listen to the entire interview here.

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Topics: AP, insurance, ACH, vendor master

Fraudsters are targeting AP and Treasury. Are you next?

Posted by Angela Sarno on Aug 3, 2021 10:01:00 AM

"I feel as if I am holding a hand grenade with the pin pulled."

This is an actual quote from one of our customers, before she was a customer.  We hear versions of this all of the time when we speak to prospects. People are scared. 

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Topics: compliance, payments fraud, AP, ACH, vendor master, risk

Guarding Against Social Engineering Fraud

Posted by Angela Sarno on Jun 30, 2021 1:38:44 PM

Cyber criminals stole more than $28 billion through email fraud from 2016-2020, according to the FBI.  Let that sink in.

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Topics: payments fraud, insurance, ACH, vendor master, risk

Fight Payments Fraud by Locking Down Your Vendor Master

Posted by PaymentWorks Staff on Jun 7, 2021 12:49:19 PM

We were thrilled to contribute to Informa’s Fraud Intelligence publication with an article to explore how locking down your vendor master can significantly help eliminate the risk of an increasingly costly threat – business payments fraud.

Increasingly savvy fraudsters have noticed and exploited all that is involved with vendor onboarding and maintenance fueling a significant increase in fraud attempts over this past year.

Read the article here.

Fraud Intelligence logo

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Topics: payments fraud, ACH, vendor master, risk

Lessons from David Kurrasch

Posted by Angela Sarno on Dec 7, 2020 10:02:00 AM

David Kurrasch, President of Global Payment Advisors and a Financial Service consultant with decades of experience in the payments industry, recently sat down with us for a lively and far ranging conversation around ACH, banks and payments fraud risk.  Excerpts are below.

 

David Kurrasch headshot

Dave Kurrasch, President of Global Payments Advisors, has worked in corporate treasury, banking and consulting for over 40 years. His career started as a cash manager at a large, diversified corporation where he ran the day-to-day cash desk, short term borrowings and investment, and bank relationships. Dave joined Wells Fargo Bank as Vice President and National Sales Manager for the Bank’s Treasury Management Division and later was promoted to Senior Vice President in charge of the Bank’s Treasury Management Product Development and Management operations. Dave and his team were responsible for all product development, risk and fraud management, unit costing and profitability analysis.

After 15 years at Wells Fargo, Dave founded Global Payments Advisors in 1997 and has provided consulting advice and contracting services to banks, corporations, universities, governments and FINTECH start-ups in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. He has deep experience in all facets of treasury management, payments, risk and fraud management and their statutory/regulatory compliance.



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Topics: ACH, vendor master, risk

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