Insurance, energy and trade are the sectors most exposed to the risk of fraud, experts in private investigation services say

Romanian companies may need to rapidly develop their strategies and defense capacity against fraud, amid changes generated by the economic and health crisis caused by the SARS-COV2 virus, Romanian experts in private investigations for the corporate environment say.

If until now, the number of industries exposed to the risk of losses due to fraud committed by individuals or specialized criminal groups was relatively small and fraud was committed mainly offline, the new economic reality could accelerate the transfer of crime in the online environment and also expand the sphere of companies exposed to risk.

“If we make a list of the most exposed companies to fraud in Romania, the first places would be currently occupied by companies operating in sectors such as insurance, energy, trade and banking, and fraud is mostly offline. Abroad, the main sectors targeted by criminal groups are banking, trade, insurance and less energy. In the top of the most advanced states in terms of using specialized private investigation services are the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain,” says Marius Porceanu, founder and CEO of SPIA – Secret Private Investigations Agency, a company in the top profile suppliers for the corporate market.

“The insurance industry is the area most exposed to cross-border crime, with fraud being perpetrated by global, well-organized networks with an impressive arsenal of resources and know-how, constantly refining and innovating methods and, moreover, personalizing cases. so that one solution applied to one case is no longer useful in others. Among the methods that generate the highest losses for insurers who do not take protection measures in time, there are car frauds with considerable market values ​​and frauds with so-called heirs of road accident victims,” says Antoaneta Ionescu, Managing Partner SPIA.

Even if the Romanian legislation regulated the exercise of the profession of private investigator in 2003, with the adoption of Law no. 329, the services dedicated to companies started to really develop only after 2010, with the entry into the economy of foreign investors – multinationals or investment funds that have made acquisitions in strategic areas.

According to SPIA representatives, the Romanian market was formed from the need of multinational companies to protect their investments, to eliminate or limit the risks of fraud to which they were exposed. If in Western Europe there is a tradition of decades and the field is strictly regulated, with well-cohesive organizations and guild associations, Romania is still at the beginning of the road.

Considered a young market, whose cumulative turnover approached in 2019 the threshold of 10 million euros, the market of private investigation services in Romania is dominated in value by services for companies, although agencies that provide services to individuals represent more than 80 %.

According to official statistics, 90% of last year’s turnover of the industry was achieved by the top 10 private investigation agencies out of the over 650 licensed in the field.

SPIA experts believe that, although severely affected by the pandemic, the Romanian market of private investigation services in the corporate environment has the ability to adapt quickly to changes imposed by new business models and, implicitly, to cope with the transfer of crime from offline to online .