Page 354 - ACFE Fraud Reports 2009_2020

Size of Organizations
Small organizations (those with fewer than 100 employees) continue to be the most common victims in the fraud
instances reported to us, though the overall variation between size categories is relatively small. Additionally,
small businesses make up the vast majority of commercial organizations in many countries, so the distribution
6
of cases reflected in the following chart is skewed toward larger organizations when compared with the distribu-
tion of organization size among all enterprises.

This disparity is likely due, at least in part, to the greater propensity of large organizations to employ or hire
CFEs to formally investigate fraud cases, rather than a reflection of the actual proportion of fraud occurrences
across organizations by size (that is, many small organizations might experience frauds that are not investigated
by a CFE, thus precluding their inclusion in our study). Nonetheless, our observation that the two categories of
smaller organizations — those with fewer than 100 employees and those with 100 to 999 employees — have
consistently experienced higher median losses than their larger counterparts reflects the significance of fraud in
the smallest organizations.

Size of Victim Organization — Frequency

31.8% 2012
<100 30.8%
38.2%
2010
Number of Employees 1,000–9,999 20.0% 25.9% 2008
19.5%
22.8%
100–999

28.1%

23.0%

20.6%
10,000+ 20.6%
| 2012 REPORT TO THE NATIONS on occupational FRAUD and abuse
18.9%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
Percent of Cases

6 More than 97% of private companies in the U.S. have fewer than 100 employees (U.S. Small Business Administration, www.bls.gov/bdm/table_g.txt). More than 99% of businesses in Europe have fewer
than 250 employees (European Commission, ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/index_en.htm). 98% of businesses in Canada have fewer than 100 employees (Industry Canada, www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/
sbrp-rppe.nsf/vwapj/KSBS-PSRPE_July-Juillet2011_eng.pdf/$FILE/KSBS-PSRPE_July-Juillet2011_eng.pdf). In Australia, more than 99% of employing businesses have fewer than 200 employees (Australian
Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits, Jun 2007 to Jun 2011). Small- and medium-size enterprises, or SMEs, account for more than 97% of all businesses in
Latin America and the Caribbean (www.aecm.be/servlet/Repository/presentation-antonio-leone-latin-american-and-caribbean-economic-system-(sela).pdf?IDR=314). More than 99% of enterprises in China
are SMEs (National Bureau of Statistics of China, www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2011/indexeh.htm). Approximately 95% of Nigerian manufacturing activity and 93% of all industrial firms in Morocco come
26 from SMEs (OECD, www.oecd.org/dataoecd/57/59/34908457.pdf).