The centre focuses on advancing innovation in fraud management and driving the benefits of fraud analytics to help combat the growing threat of fraud within private and public sector organisations. It combines SAS' 35 years of knowledge and skills in fraud analytics with know-how from a team of fraud experts appointed from the field. The Fraud Centre of Excellence will initially support SAS' UK and Irish markets.

The National Fraud Authority's (NFA) annual fraud indicator estimates that fraud costs the UK over £38 billion a year. The public sector accounts for £21 billion in losses, £12 billion in the private sector, £4 billion for individuals and charities accounting for £1.3 billion. The public sector remains the highest proportion of the fraud loss at 55 per cent of the total figure with the financial services industry recording the highest loss to fraudsters in the private sector at £3.6 billion[1]. The launch of the Fraud Centre of Excellence further underlines SAS' commitment to helping organisations in this economic environment of growing fraud.

The SAS Fraud Centre of Excellence is a consultative organisation that encourages best practices to be adopted by customers, enabling improved decision making and supporting fraud investigations. The centre aims to work with customers to understand what benefits their organisation can derive from fraud analytics, help to identify where that threat comes from and how to prevent it. The end result being improved performance and a positive effect on their bottom line.

Andy Cutler, SAS' executive sponsor for the Fraud Centre of Excellence states: "Financial institutions, government departments, health-care organisations are all seeing an increase in fraud. The figures from the NFA are a clear indication that there is a need for increased guidance and expertise from specialists in fraud management, such as SAS, who can add value. To combat fraud effectively, orrganisations need to gain a true enterprise-wide view of the problem, only then can they implement the appropriate prevention strategy; we already work with world-leading organisations on doing just that. The SAS Fraud Centre of Excellence gives us another string to our bow; it enables SAS to provide a team of highly skilled, highly focused individuals to specifically tackle an issue that is costing businesses billions."

SAS works with private and public sector organisations (see whitepaper on Public Sector Fraud and Error) across the world such as HSBC and Washington State's Department of Labor and Industries, as well as HM Government, on implementing faster, more versatile and accurate enterprise fraud detection. Armed with an innovative statewide detection system, the Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC) has collected $1.2 million of improperly avoided unemployment insurance taxes, plus penalty and interest. Also, a fraud project in Los Angeles County achieved an 85 percent accuracy rate in detecting collusive fraud rings, and a projected return on investment of up to $30 million annually.