It’s 2020, so what else did you expect? You’ve probably heard that we’re seeing a lot more litigation as a result of the pandemic and the resulting economic crisis – I’ve covered that trend here, here, here and here.  And, because of California’s California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), data privacy compliance is on the rise too.  So, why would you think that corporate investigations are any different?  They aren’t and a recent blog post from H5 illustrates why they’re on the rise too.

In their blog post Think the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Reduced the Need to Focus on Corporate Investigations? Think Again., H5 starts by discussing the trend from their 2019 Corporate Investigations Survey that nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents involved with corporate investigations expected the number of investigations to increase over the next three years. But that was last year, and this year is WAY different.  Right?

Maybe not.  As I’ve also already noted, cyberattacks and data breaches are on the rise, including seven times the number of ransomware attacks in the first half of 2020 when compared to the same period last year.  Increased cyberattacks always leads to an increase in corporate investigations.

But another notable trend is fraud activity – both internal and external.  Back in September, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners published the results of a survey of certified fraud examiners. The survey notes that 74% of surveyed certified fraud examiners indicated that preventing, detecting, and investigating fraud in the COVID-19 era has been even more challenging than it was before the pandemic, over three-fourths of them (77%) have seen increased fraud and nearly all of them (92%) expect an additional increase in fraud next year.

And those are just a couple of the statistics. There’s also additional opportunity for employee misconduct when working remotely (gee, you think?) and more.  I won’t steal their thunder – you can check out the additional stats for cybersecurity, fraud and other factors here.  Corporate investigations are up too?  That’s so 2020!

So, what do you think?  Are you surprised by some of the fraud stats above?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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