By Angie Newland @ Angels Admin Support
Reading an article from FT Adviser called “Firms need to have whistle blowing policies in place” it got me thinking about some of the points that were raised in the article.
Tom Dunstan at FT Adviser spoke to Emma Brown CEO of Medius (an AP Automation & Global software company working with companies to reduce fraud risk) who went on to raise the issues around not having a whistleblowing policy and procedure in place, and the fraud risks associated with that.
One comment that she made had some interesting statistics –
“Brown highlighted the importance of introducing a whistleblower policy due to a gap between perception and reporting.
“What we find is that the estimated cases of fraud amongst customers that we’ve surveyed, and other kinds of external sources, are lower than actual rates that then become detected,” she explained.
“There’s a bit of a gap between how much fraud is perceived to be happening and how much is actually happening.”
Brown evidenced this by pointing to statistics which showed that 65 per cent of finance professionals within organisations are aware fraud is going on within their organisations, yet 77 per cent take no action on it.
“They just don’t really see a fit way to move forward with it, usually out of a fear of recrimination and any sort of negative consequence coming back on them,” she added.”
From reading this it becomes clear that this can mean that: –
- firms do not have a whistleblowing policy in place, or if they do it is not effective or being used correctly.
- If it is not being used it could be that their workplace culture does not encourage employees to speak up when there is a problem identified.
- If there is a policy in place employees may not be aware of what they should be doing if they need to report something, or what the steps are in the process.
- Or the policy was not mentioned in their induction – which then poses the question if it was not mentioned in the induction why is the firm not including this?
It most definitely shows that Whistleblowing Policies and Procedures are an area that firms still need to make improvements on.
She then went on to say -
“The important thing is to make sure to talk about fraud within the business so that people know it’s something that does happen,” she said.
“It’s not something to be scared of, or to fear that you’re going to be outcast if you report something.”
She added that, by making fraud a topic people are more comfortable to talk about within organisations and cultivating greater awareness of what to look out for, “it will help to close the gap between estimated occurrence of fraud and actual occurrence.”
From the FCA’s perspective whistleblowing and how it is communicated and reported has close links to a firms Culture, the Consumer Duty rules, Risk Assessing, Employees Psychological safety, Business reputation, Retaining staff, Fraud risk, and more. It is something that can have so many benefits to a firm but can often be perceived as being detrimental to a firm. Surely when looking at the bigger picture the risks of NOT having a whistleblowing policy and process in place, are much greater than if you have one?
Does your firm have a Whistleblowing Policy in place?
Here is the link to the article - https://www.ftadviser.com/your-industry/2024/06/14/firms-need-to-have-whistleblowing-policies-in-place/
If you would like to see how we at Angels Admin Support can assist you with policies and procedures related to this blog, then please do get in touch, we would love to hear from you.
Email: angie@angelsadminsupport.co.uk