New campaign launches to highlight small business fraud risks

The Love Business, Hate Fraud campaign aims to raise awareness of the threat fraud poses to UK businesses, especially smaller ones. Over the coming year it will provide simple, practical advice to businesses to help them spot and stop fraud more easily.

It comes as a new survey, commissioned to support the launch of the campaign, found that 44% of SMEs, and 49% of all businesses, agreed that fraud was a major risk to growing their business over the next two years.

For those SMEs that had experienced crime in the past two years, 18% said fraud was the most disruptive single crime they face, ahead of cybercrime, burglary, robbery, theft and assault.

When asked what they thought was the biggest barrier to tackling fraud, 21% of SMEs said a lack of understanding of how it could affect their business, while 20% said the cost of taking action.

Sir David Green CB QC, chairman of the Fraud Advisory Panel, said: “We all benefit when small businesses thrive, bringing growth and prosperity to our communities. We don’t want to see a single business fail because of fraud, and so the harm this crime is causing must not go unchallenged.

“Our survey shows that for many businesses, significant barriers to preventing fraud remain. Our campaign aims to overcome these.

“I urge everyone who cares about small businesses – their owners, staff, customers and suppliers – to support our campaign to show fraudsters that we Love Business and Hate Fraud.”

Lee Fitzgerald, fraud risk strategy director at Barclays International, said: “Barclays has an established track record for being advocates of fraud education and awareness and were the first UK Bank to use television adverts to promote fraud awareness. We see our partnership with the Fraud Advisory Panel as an intrinsic part of Barclays’ ongoing manifesto to eradicate fraud and scams in the UK. We are here to help UK businesses of all sizes defend themselves from fraud and scams and fully support the Fraud Advisory Panel’s Love Business, Hate Fraud campaign.”