At a recent HE event attended by TIAA an initial straw poll highlighted that only 3 in the room had access to, or used fraud specialists in their work to facilitate the identification or prevention of fraud issues.

In the session delivered by TIAA, which provided a status update on the landscape, >40% of reported crime is fraud related, technology is increasingly driving incidents as well as costs of living pressures are causing further pressures resulting in individuals committing fraud.

Key Points

  • Cyber enabled risks
  • Insider fraud
  • Increasing incidents of students being targeted to be ‘money mules’
  • Risks of international students involvement in money laundering and sale of bank accounts at conclusion of courses
  • Grant funding fraud
  • Shadow IT systems / use of Bring your own devices (BYOD) creating significant risks

Discussions amongst the group took place in respect of what each group considered to be the top 3 fraud risks that the sector faced, with the following areas fed back:

  • Online payment processing / visibility and traceability
  • International Student recruitment (Agents/Ghost students – who never attend)
  • Grant funding management
  • Separation of duties within corporate functions
  • Outside normal hours business processes
  • Data Analysis – comparison to other data sets (e.g expenses vs procurement)
  • Behaviours – bullying
  • Relationships / collusion
  • Culture
  • Trust and reliance on others
  • Cyber crime risks and institutional risk register entries for this
  • Procurement, declaration of interests / too good to be true
  • Work from home / attendance and productivity
  • Organised crime – cyber in particular
  • Fictious students – fake online presence
  • Access sprawl between data and systems (movers in organisation not having access revoked)
  • Work from home affecting ability to appropriately and robustly check details on students and new staff
  • Estates Management – lack of visibility on large scale projects
  • Use of consultants

The session also covered the changes in approach of Internal Audit in tackling fraud, by considering a number of steps, of which included:

  • The use of Multi Disciplined Teams to undertake audits
  • Use of intelligence and lessons learned from wider sector issues, to feed into audit programmes
  • Root Cause Analysis and findings from investigations and compliance failures.
  • Ability to undertake ‘deep dive’ audits
  • Development of Fraud Champions and Fraud Risk Governance Groups
  • Basic fraud awareness / identification training

To gain a further insight into the fraud measures in place across the HE sector TIAA are conducting a survey and would appreciate your input, responses will result in feedback along with some commentary on the details collated.

Survey Link: To access the survey, please click the link below.

Fraud Risks Initiative in the HE Sector – Survey

For further information please contact Helen Cargill, Director of Audit Higher Education – Contact Us