For finance leaders, this is no longer simply a compliance or technology issue. It is a balance-sheet discipline. And control must start before money leaves the business.
Learn how Emburse Assurance can automate compliance from the start.
Why the UK risk profile has shifted
The UK’s highly digital payments ecosystem and dense fintech landscape make it an attractive target for organised criminal groups. Enforcement activity and industry reporting from bodies such as the City of London Police, the National Crime Agency and UK Finance show that attacks are increasingly coordinated and technically capable.
At the same time, generative AI has lowered the barrier to entry for document fraud. Synthetic paystubs, employment letters and invoices can now pass basic verification checks, particularly where firms rely on format-based validation rather than layered behavioural and bank-flow analysis.
Static rules and post-submission audits were not built for this level of sophistication. Field-level checks cannot assess intent, context, or authenticity. That gap is where modern fraud thrives.
The financial consequence is clear: higher loss volatility and greater uncertainty around provisioning.
Fraud as a financial stress scenario
CFOs are accustomed to modelling revenue shocks, cost inflation and liquidity constraints. Fraud now deserves the same treatment.
Consider a simplified illustration:
- Revenue: £200m
- Baseline fraud rate: 0.25% → £500k loss
- Stressed fraud rate: 2.0% → £4m loss
An incremental £3.5m reduction in operating performance can materially compress margins and narrow covenant headroom. For leveraged firms, repeated shocks of this scale may alter financing flexibility and investor confidence.
The issue is not just the loss, but also the unpredictability; when fraud is treated as an operational afterthought, volatility increases. But when it is embedded into real-time financial controls, variance narrows and confidence returns.
Embedding fraud into board-level stress testing strengthens governance and reduces surprise.
A control framework for finance leaders
1. Quantify exposure in financial terms
Move beyond incident counts. Track fraud loss as a percentage of revenue, time-to-detect, recovery rates and net impact on operating margin. Ensure reporting ties directly to P&L and provisioning schedules.
2. Integrate fraud into stress testing and reserves
Model plausible fraud shocks and document assumptions for audit review. Align treasury planning and covenant monitoring to these scenarios.
3. Deploy layered controls
Single-signal document checks are no longer sufficient. Effective defence in the UK market now combines:
- Bank-flow verification
- Behavioural and transaction analytics
- Device and session intelligence
- Identity graphing
- Machine learning document forensics capable of detecting generative artefacts
Layered defence is not about adding friction. It is about embedding intelligence into the flow of spend, so low-risk activity moves quickly and genuine anomalies surface immediately.
For firms operating ATM or cash networks, rigorous patch management, physical custody controls and real-time telemetry are equally critical.
4. Strengthen governance
Make fraud a standing agenda item for the board and audit committee. Require regular dashboards that quantify financial exposure and mitigation progress.
From alert detection to infrastructure-level financial control
Emburse Assurance embeds AI-powered expense compliance directly into the expense workflow. It strengthens control before submission, surfaces risk after submission, and connects both to CFO-level reporting. The result: Finance teams can map fraud exposure directly to P&L and balance-sheet impact.
Rather than treating fraud alerts as isolated operational events, finance leaders can:
- Reduce audit noise before it reaches approvers
- Quantify exposure as a percentage of revenue in real time
- Feed verified spend signals directly into stress modelling
- Link compliance performance to provisioning and covenant planning
This integration allows CFOs to move from reactive remediation to proactive capital protection.
From operational cost to strategic control
The UK regulatory environment is increasingly focused on operational resilience and financial stability. Proactive modelling, layered defences and transparent governance not only reduce loss but demonstrate responsible stewardship to regulators and investors alike.
Fraud will evolve. The advantage belongs to organisations that embed intelligence at the point of spend rather than reconcile risk after the fact.
UK CFOs who embed fraud analytics into financial reporting frameworks, align detection with treasury planning and invest in integrated controls will protect capital, preserve covenants and maintain market confidence.
Emburse Assurance operates as part of Emburse Expense Intelligence, the infrastructure layer that connects travel, expense, AP, and payments into one intelligence loop. Fraud signals do not sit in isolation. They inform forecasting, policy tuning, and capital allocation decisions across the enterprise.
Explore how Emburse Assurance can help finance leaders like you control spend before it becomes risk.