Survey Says SMBs most likely to be Impacted by Embezzlement
U.S. organizations with less than 500 employees experienced a median loss of $280,000 per year due to employee theft across a wide range of industries, according to a new survey. The 2015 Hiscox Embezzlement Watchlist: A Snapshot of Employee Theft in the US, which examines employee theft cases that were active in the US federal courts during the previous calendar year, found that embezzlement is not just a problem for large organizations or the financial services industry; 80 percent of victim organizations had fewer than 100 employees,and losses were suffered across a wide variety of industries, with an average total loss of $842,403.
With a comprehensive view of the employee fraud landscape, organizations can better protect themselves by understanding the characteristics of a typical embezzler. According to the report, most instances of employee theft involve employees with long tenure. Women represented more than 60 percent of employee perpetrators, while the median age of wrongdoers was 50. The embezzlers were also not confined to the finance operations of an organization. In fact, more than 50 percent of actions were committed by employees not in the finance or accounting function.