What is the true cost of "False Positives?"

by Fran Clark
V.P. Business Development
Profitect, Inc.

A False Positive (FP) is when you investigate what you think is a problem for the company, it turns out to be a normal, valid transaction. FP does NOT mean that what you found wasn't fraud. I believe that any time you research what you believe to be a problem and it was a pricing, training, process or compliance issue... its isn't a false positive. A VP of Asset Protection for a top 10 retail organization once told me that his FP's were anywhere from 50%-90%. To me, that's a massive investment in investigation time.

For responses to my question, I won't disclose names of person, company or products referenced. I will publish the results of my findings. Perhaps a good study would be to find out how many FP's your department has for a month or a quarter... just for you own information. Fran can be emailed at francispclark@profitect.com.

What are your thoughts? See your comments posted in the Daily tomorrow.