This well known phrase was penned by James Whitcomb Riley and provides a perfect analogy for the process of tackling fraud; that of being able to identify, analyse and assess a fraud risk or attempt and then articulating this in the right way and to the right people.
Interestingly, Emil Mazy extended Riley’s phrase to: “When I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks – I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.”
The analogy here can be strengthened to incorporate further checks and balances to identify and assess a fraud risk or attempt. At Ipswich Building Society we look for behaviours and patterns, along with developing an understanding of our intermediary and supplier relationships that may indicate a fraud risk or attempt.
We do this in a number of ways including; rigorous review of requests to join our broker panel, staff training, detailed monitoring and logging of any identified issues, close partnerships with police and use of technology to spot any concerns.
Now, going back to my duck analogy, these processes help us to hear and observe our potential duck, for example: “Is that a quack I hear? That could be a duck. I should look harder to decide.”
So, we need to check for webbed feet, feathers and a propensity to hang out with other ducks. We actively encourage our employees to share with each other their experiences of any potential fraud attempts.
This knowledge sharing not only helps them to up-skill but also helps to provide any warnings about individuals or types of behaviour they should look out for – in effect what do webbed feet and feathers look like.
We do have an IT system to log identified fraud attempts and staff regularly refer to it, however the personal coaching and sharing between employees helps to bring these experiences to life beyond the black and white words providing context that can sometimes be lost in an electronic file. We also share our intelligence with other building societies, helping to better protect the whole sector.
This context and sharing beyond our own society helps us to establish if our fraud case likes hanging out at duck ponds.
And that is how a duck can help you identify and tackle fraud.
Paul Winter is chief executive at Ipswich Building Society
