White collar crimes are only recorded as crimes if there is a court conviction.
But your candidates for sensitive roles may have a shady financial history that is invisible to standard police checks. This does not tick the ‘due diligence’ box. It merely skims the surface rather than takes a deep dive.
So how does this history fly under the police radar?
An organisation detects white collar crimes such as fraud or embezzlement. One voice encourages police prosecution for the protection of future employers and the wider community. Another voice discourages any adverse media publicity that may permanently tarnish their brand name. To avoid embarrassment, the employee is often ushered out the door silently, again.
The employer saves face and the ex-employee knocks on the next door with a clean criminal record, again.
The history may have started long ago, perhaps when the employee was experiencing a personal or financial crisis. If a small misdemeanour goes undetected, it may morph into progressively bigger risks. To cover the trail of white collar crimes such as money laundering, the employee may engage in parallel crimes such as identity fraud. And the ‘gambling’ continues, under the radar, under your roof.
Hence, a different radar is required: Credit/Bankruptcy Checks
Credit/Bankruptcy Checks take a deeper dive into credit history, bankruptcy, loan application fraud, identity fraud, welfare fraud, money laundering, credit defaults, embezzlement, past directorships, insolvency, summons records, court judgements, professional debarment and financial misappropriation.
In Australia and New Zealand, this radar is the tool of Illion, not the Police. The credit information is sourced by the financial service regulators: Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC), Australian Financial Services (AFS) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).
These deep dives reveal such activities dating back a minimum of five years.
If the applicant has lived or worked overseas, there are global online searches to determine if that person has been banned and disqualified from working in financial services. For example, the FRS Homeland Security Search spans 137 different international lists covering white collar crimes, money laundering, cyber-crimes, terrorism financing, politically exposed persons, fugitives, professional debarment, most wanted and foreign agents.
If we are serious about due diligence, Credit/Bankruptcy Checks are required for any applicant in management or money-handling roles, from Directors to CFOs to Accountants to Book Keepers to Receptionists and Administration staff who handle petty cash.
Credit/Bankruptcy Checks protect your business and your people.
Credit/Bankruptcy Checks should be incorporated into your company policy. This ensures that they are automatically integrated into the contract agreement without requiring additional written consent. An explicit policy protects your company from the risk of breaching privacy and discrimination laws.
There is much to lose for skimming over this financial integrity check, but much to gain in conducting Credit/Bankruptcy Checks annually: identify any adverse financial information; remain compliant with regulatory obligations; mitigate risk of negligent hiring; enable informed decisions based on reliable records.
AIS International Group provides the convenience of a one-stop shop to source both Criminal Checks and Credit/Bankruptcy Checks. With multiple radars checking on multiple levels, our fully integrated software paints a fuller picture of the applicant’s history.
We are accredited with illion Australia and illion New Zealand, so the outcomes will be swift and reliable.
Avoid the holes in your financial control by avoiding holes in your due diligence. The blind spot that flies under the police radar is ‘clocked’ by the Credit/Bankruptcy Check that prevents far greater costs to your company.
It takes time to earn trust, but a Credit/Bankruptcy Check may provide the red flags to fast-track that process.
