Don’t let your firm be used by rogues
Posted on July 12th 2010
Not a week goes by where there isn’t a press release about a broker being fined or struck off the FSA register for some kind of financial crime; this may lead you to think that fraud has suddenly spiralled out of control. However, in my experience the increase in fines and de-authorisations is more likely to be attributable to improved detection rates at the FSA.
What should be of interest to all brokers is to ensure that proper controls are in place to stop themselves being inadvertently used in a financial crime ring, ignorance is not a defence and I am sure some have found this out to their great expense. Lenders are constantly being faced with increasingly sophisticated criminals who are hell bent on defrauding them and we too have to be vigilant and have the right controls in place to ensure we are not going to become a victim. In our experience the professional fraudsters are the most dangerous; these people tend to operate in rings that incorporate a mix of customers, solicitors, valuers, estate agents, house builders and brokers.
This is the main reason why we operate a controlled distribution, valuation and solicitor’s panel which makes it extremely difficult for a criminal to penetrate; in addition we have several technology solutions that help us detect financial crime and a team of people who have specific responsibility for detecting attempted fraud.
Financial crime is not something that we should become paranoid about; rather we should all be vigilante and do whatever we can to ensure we do not get targeted. Even though there has been some juicy headlines about fraud, in our experience it is a tiny fraction of individuals that are dishonest, the overwhelming majority are honest law abiding citizens.
