BFA #025 | Organizing the Chaos

What's happening Fraud Fighters?

If you've taken on the task of creating or overhauling fraud operations at your company, you know it can feel like an uphill battle.

When processes are undocumented or disorganized, it's challenging to make meaningful progress.

Where do you even begin establishing structure within all that chaos?

Let's investigate further.

Read Time: ~3.57 Minutes

Understanding the Chaos

There were no pre-existing structures, no clear protocols, and absolutely no team. I was taking over from another fraud by committee. A handful of people who inherited different parts of fraud, but want nothing to do with it. Why would they though? It was never really supposed to be why they were hired.

It’s never not a daunting task, but for some reason this is where I thrive.

The fraud operations function had been neglected for years and processes were disorganized at best, nonexistent at worst.

The team consisted of 3 people working in silos, no documented procedures, and zero big picture strategy or coordination. They were happy to quickly hand off their responsibilities to me - almost in a way that they felt like I was a sucker…

I started with a deep dive fraud risk assessment, interviewing stakeholders across the business to shine a light on vulnerabilities and digging through customer tickets to find the voice of the customer. It was eye opening just how many gaps there were in processes and controls throughout the business. No wonder why they decided to hire for this role

Organizing the Chaos