Half (49%) of accountants are not proactively looking for fraud in their day to day work, even though 51% said that cyber fraud posed a ‘catastrophic risk’ to their businesses, found new in-depth research by ACCA into fraud awareness across the profession.

A prevailing attitude of ‘fear of finding out’ is also holding companies back from conducting thorough checks and raising awareness, ACCA said in its latest research report, Combatting fraud in a perfect storm.

The report describes fraud as ‘systemic’ and also severely underreported or misclassified. 

These threats are deepened by governance gaps that leave fraud unowned and undetected, ACCA warned, stressing the lack of accountability was one of the critical weak spots.