‘Fraud cases in India surged 21% in 2017’

Country saw highest global incidence of fraud in 3 categories: Kroll report

Danger ahead:More companies are becoming aware of the risks related to fraud and are taking preventive steps.

India witnessed a significant increase in fraud cases involving corporates with 89% of executives reporting that their companies fell victim to at least one instance of fraud in the past 12 months, up from 68% in 2016, according to Kroll Annual Global Fraud & Risk Report 2017-18.

‘Significant rise’

“In India, the percentage of respondents affected by fraud increased significantly by 21% in 2017 to 89% while the global average this year is 84%,” said Reshmi Khurana, managing director and head, South Asia, Kroll.

As per this report, India witnessed the highest incidence of fraud globally across three categories — theft of physical asset or stock (40%), IP theft, piracy or counterfeiting (36%) and corruption and bribery (31%). The findings revealed that most common perpetrators of fraud incidents in India in the past 12 months were joint venture partners with 45% respondents naming them as the primary perpetrators.

Last year, existing and former employees were the main perpetrators of fraud within a company. This year, junior employees were the second most common perpetrators causing fraud incidents (43% respondents), as per the report.

As much as 33% of respondents in India suggested that the extent of loss suffered by their company due to fraud was more than 7% of the revenues. This was significantly higher than the 23% of respondents witnessed globally. Mexico was the only country where a larger proportion of respondents suffered loss of more than 7% of revenues due to fraud (39% respondents).

Cybersecurity remained an area of concern with 84% of Indian respondents saying they had experienced a cyberattack in the past 12 months, indicating an 11% point rise from 2016 (73%).

“The silver lining for India is that while higher proportion of companies witnessed fraud during 2017, increasing number of companies are also becoming aware of risks related to fraud and are taking preventive measures to tackle the issue,” said Tarun Bhatia, MD, Kroll South Asia.

“In coming years, however, combating information security risks would gain priority as fraud risk due to information theft is only likely to increase as India chases its digitisation dream,” he added.