Further, according to the report, 95% of these 52% firms experienced new types of fraud due to the disruption caused by Covid-19.
“With organisational perimeters becoming more vulnerable over the past two years, it is imperative for businesses to not just continually focus on policies, training, and internal controls but also prioritise investing in sophisticated technologies to manage and mitigate the evolving nature of frauds,” said Puneet Garkhel, partner and leader, forensics services, PwC India.
Garkhel added that it is increasingly becoming important for organisations to understand the end-to-end life cycle of customer-facing products and strike a balance between user experience and fraud controls.
“Over time, formidable actors become better at exploiting cracks,” he said.
Among the organisations that encountered fraud in the last two years, 12% experienced ESG reporting fraud, 9% experienced anti-embargo fraud, and 19% experienced supply chain fraud.
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67% of companies that experienced fraud reported that the most disruptive incident came via an external attack or collusion between external and internal sources.
The new types of fraud experienced by companies include misconduct risk (67%), legal risk (16%), cybercrime (31%), insider trading (19%), and platform risk (38%).
The survey also found that larger enterprises were hit harder, with 60% of companies with revenues over $1 billion experiencing fraud compared with 37% of firms with revenues under $100 million.
Misconduct was the biggest challenge faced by organisations as bad actors began collaborating and taking advantage of pandemic-related uncertainties and volatilities.
Amongst organisations that reported fraud, conduct risk (or risks associated with individuals within the firm, vendors, agents, and customers) was the biggest threat at 90%.
The top frauds in India have changed significantly in the last two years. Customer fraud (e.g. fraud involving mortgages, credit cards, claims, and cheques) was the top fraud reported by 47% of companies.
Cybercrime came a close second, with 45% of Indian organisations reporting this type of fraud. Further, KYC failure was experienced by 34% of Indian firms that experienced fraud, corruption, or economic/financial crime.
