The Association for Financial Professionals released its annual survey of treasury practitioners, revealing some startling statistics about just how vulnerable businesses are to fraud attacks and attempts.

In this episode, Thea Dudley, owner of Pocket Protectors, speaks with RC Publisher Jill Bloom about the survey’s findings and what roofing contractors can do to protect themselves from fraud and other schemes.

For instance, according to the survey, 80% of organizations were the victims of payment fraud in 2023, a 15 percentage point increase from 2022. The most vulnerable payment method for fraud is checks, with 65% of respondents reporting they experienced fraud of this type.

For the first time in history of the survey, ACH credits surpassed wires as the most vulnerable payment type for BEC, or business email compromise fraud.

“That's a lot of that hacking — that going into your system and being able to maybe divert the funds by sending a phishing or a smishing email,” she said. “Before you know it, you've changed your bank account and all your money's going somewhere else.”

There is some good news in the report. Of those who were victims, 30% said they were unsuccessful in recovering the stolen funds but 41% said they did recover at least three-quarters of the lost funds.

Dudley breaks down what contractors can to do shore up their financial security and help prevent fraud in their business, from implementing cyber security training to using payment portals.

View the full episode here, or download the podcast version and listen at your leisure.