Ilya Umanskiy and Björn Wahlström of Current Consulting, Dominic Wai of ONC Lawyers and Gwynn Hopkins of Perun Consultants recently collaborated on a podcast for IR Global members.
Topic: Asset Recovery – Understanding the process and building resilience
Our group discussed asset recovery through the lens of 4 questions:
- Have you seen an increase in fraud cases with asset recovery needs? What “pain points” have you noticed?
- In your opinion, what are some of the driving factors behind current trends?
- What is your typical process in asset recovery cases? Where do you start and what’s important to keep in mind?
- We have a lawyer, a forensic accountant, a certified investigator, and a resilience specialist in this conversation. How do we collaborate better for the benefit of our clients?
- Now, to put all this together, what advice can you offer clients to help build resilience against fraud in general and loss of financial assets in particular?
General notes from the conversation:
- Financial fraud has been on the increase before the pandemic, but has added an extra level of complexity in the last year and a half.
- Speed of action and awareness of required resources in asset recovery cases continues to be a challenge.
- Access to law enforcement resources continues to be inconsistent and depends of several factors.
- While large organizations may have better resources for asset recovery and fraud management in general, medium-size and smaller organizations struggle and often have to write-off losses with significant impact on liquidity, operations, and reputation.
- Collaboration among practitioners with legal, forensic accounting, investigative, and crisis management backgrounds is necessary to maximize positive outcomes for clients.
- Prevention of losses through frequent analysis of internal controls is always an optimal solution.