Anonymous Hotline Service Reduces Fraud

Chapel Hill, North Carolina (PRWEB) March 27, 2012

Ethical Advocate today announced that it is offering its Ethics Hotline Reporting service as a packaged component for insurance and business services companies. Since hotlines have been shown to be the most effective mechanism in reducing the cost of fraud, they are a critical part of insurance coverage and risk mitigation service.

Insurance companies find they are able to serve increasingly diverse customers by offering additional business services beyond the traditional liability coverage. Ethical Advocate has just introduced its services to clients of a multi-billion dollar U.S. insurance company to help distinguish their business liability products. Organizations that only carry general liability and umbrella insurance products still have gaps that need to be addressed.

The average organization loses anywhere between 5-7% of their revenue to fraud. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) reviews fraud cases and reports that having a hotline reduces the cost of fraud by 59.2% and the length of time to discovery by 35%. When a hotline is not in place, the average fraud incident is $245,000. With a hotline in place, the average incident is $100,000. According to ACFE reports, having a hotline in place reduces the cost of fraud more than any other mechanism. Fraud hotline return on investment can be increased further by covering other types of malfeasance, such as human resources (discrimination, harassment, etc.), product/service quality, and safety.

According to Steve Yesko, Lowers Associates, an international leader in enterprise-wide risk mitigation and loss prevention services, “We encourage all of our clients to have an ethics helpline. Per the ACFE report, it is one of the easiest ways for organizations to mitigate the cost of fraud. Employees and stakeholders must have a way to report malfeasance that does not jeopardize their job or relationship with the organization. Offering this service as part of an overall insurance risk mitigation package is long overdue.”

Ethical Advocate is ideally suited to provide these services. The highly customizable system gives organizations the power to quickly pinpoint unethical acts and easily analyze critical data to determine instances of fraud, identify problem areas and evaluate overall trends. The compliance hotline report management and statistical analysis systems provide the data that management needs, when they need it.

ABOUT ETHICAL ADVOCATE

Ethical Advocate (EA) provides comprehensive compliance solutions, including ethics training and anonymous hotline systems, to more than one million users in all sectors, including corporate, government and educational institutions. Persons desiring to report incidents, indiscretions, or suggestions can do so securely, 24/7/365, multilingual, via the Internet and phone. For more information, visit http://www.ethicaladvocate.com or call (888) ETHICS6.

ABOUT LOWERS RISK

Headquartered in Northern Virginia, Lowers & Associates ("L&A") is an independent, internationally recognized risk management consulting firm. L&A offers a wide range of loss prevention/control, risk assessment, loss/claims investigation, audit, compliance, and related risk management services. With expertise in both physical and operational security as well as internal controls, L&A has become an acknowledged authority on matters of crime and fidelity related risk mitigation over the last 25 years. Throughout it's history, L&A has partnered with many different types of organizations to aid in the mitigation of business, operational, and technology risks on both a proactive/pre-loss and reactive/post-loss basis. Today L&A's service offering extends into computer/cyber crime with a comprehensive array of privacy protection, network/information security, and cyber risk management services. Given the areas of L&A's historical success, special domain expertise is afforded organizations in the banking/financial services, hospital/healthcare, higher education, retail/wholesale, event/venue, hotel/resort, casino/gaming, armored car, courier, high value cargo, fine arts, jewelers, auto dealership, check-casher, pawnbroker, and ATM industries. For more information about L&A, please visit their website at, http://www.lowersrisk.com.

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