CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Every year, the typical business loses five percent of its revenue to internal theft, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. But small businesses are disproportionately affected: while the median fraud loss for companies of all sizes is $145,000, the median loss for small businesses is $154,000. The main reason smaller organizations tend to suffer greater losses is that they often don’t have adequate resources to fund fraud prevention measures that would detect and prevent internal leaks.
Enter the new Business Fraud Risk Calculator, a two-minute diagnostic that identifies major risk factors for fraud at small businesses, built by financial solutions startup Bento for Business. The calculator’s 10 questions, distilled from the ACFE’s most recent Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, ask small businesses about a range of issues commonly linked to fraud cases, including expense policies, receipt handling, and use of accounting systems.
Bento’s Business Fraud Risk Calculator assesses fraud risk on a 100-point scale, then offers explanations and recommendations for how business owners can lower their risk, as well as practical tips on expense fraud detection.
The ACFE’s findings show that this type of proactive fraud detection translate to shorter duration of fraud events and lower overall costs when fraud does occur. Both can mean major savings, given that the median duration of a fraud “event” is 18 months.
“According to the 2016 ACFE Report to the Nations, small businesses were more susceptible to expense reimbursement fraud schemes than companies with more than 100 employees,” said ACFE Vice President and Program Director Bruce Dorris, J.D., CFE, CPA, CVA. "Due to smaller budgets and staff size, small businesses often face an uphill battle when it comes to fighting fraud. They are less likely to have anti-fraud controls in place, but often incur losses the same size as large organizations, leaving them particularly vulnerable to fraud.”
“We’re big believers in the power of technology to help business owners eliminate fraud,” said Bento CEO Farhan Ahmad. “But it doesn’t work in a vacuum. Understanding which behaviors make you more susceptible to fraud is an essential first step toward eliminating those behaviors.”
In addition to its new Business Fraud Risk Calculator, Bento offers several articles and case studies on what occupational fraud looks like in real world, with depictions of actual embezzlement and accounting fraud incidents that happened at small businesses.
Take the diagnostic here: https://bentoforbusiness.com/fraud-detection-calculator-1/.
About Bento for Business
Bento for Business provides financial solutions that fit small and medium-sized businesses, combining the security of a bank with the ease and convenience of a modern technology company. Bento’s signature expense cards provide business owners with much-needed controls and expense fraud protection, as well as more advanced features, than more expensive and cumbersome enterprise solutions offer.