Central government
The Serious Crime Act 2007 gave the Audit Commission new statutory powers to conduct data matching exercises by inserting a new Part 2A into the Audit Commission Act 1998.
The powers enable the benefits of National Fraud Initiative (NFI) to be shared with central government bodies as many of the risks addressed by NFI are also relevant to central government departments and agencies.
Payroll screening
Employers have a legal responsibility to check that they do not employ illegal workers. Under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, you could be liable for a fine of up to £10,000 per illegal worker.
Taking part in the NFI helps address this risk of employing someone with no entitlement to work in the UK and by publicising participation it should act as a strong deterrent against fraudulent employment applications and employee identity fraud.
We match payroll data to the UK Border Agency in-country immigration and expired and refused UK visa data. This enables us to identify employees who have no right to work or stay in the UK. 169 individuals were dismissed or have resigned because of matches highlighted by the NFI 2010/2011 exercise.
Many of the cases unearthed by the NFI relate to employees who had been working illegally for several years and had produced forged documentation and could have continued to do so had they not been highlighted.
The NFI can help you:
- Ensure you comply with UK employment legislation by identifying employees with no right to work or no right to stay in the UK
- Identify potential fraudsters working for your organisation
- Identify employees who may be breaking their contract of employment
NFI 2010/2011 identified around £4 million of overpayments to illegal workers and this led to the resignation or dismissal of 169 workers.
Creditors screening
We provide creditor payment screening and have developed a range of tests to identify duplicate payments. Aside from the financial benefits, data matches help to improve the efficiency with which organisations maintain their creditor payment systems.
The NFI can help you identify duplicate payments and incorrect VAT payments that can be recovered, caused by incorrect supplier invoices, input errors and VAT miscalculations. The reasons for this are wide ranging, from human error to poor processes, controls that can be overridden and the fact that accounting systems can only carry out basic checks.
The initiative can also help you strengthen your internal control arrangements, by highlighting system weaknesses or common errors within your creditor data. For example we identify multiple occurrences of the same creditor but with different reference numbers or differently spelt organisation title.
NFI identified £5.5 million of overpayments in 2010/2011 in this area.
Bespoke screening
Our data matching powers allow us to undertake any data matching for the purpose of preventing or detecting fraud. Therefore, if you have identified a fraud risk that data matching could address we would be happy to discuss this with you. Please contact us for more information.
Fees
The fees for Payroll and Creditors screening are set out below. Fees for Bespoke screening are available on request.
| Government departments and agencies (core matching – creditors and payroll) |
NFI fee 2012/13 |
| Fewer than 2,000 employees | £2,100 |
| 2,001 – 5,000 employees | £4,200 |
| Above 5,001 employees | £5,250 |
| Additional modules (existing) | £2,100 per module |
| All additional non-standard data matching | Price on request |
Please note that the NFI is no longer deemed a vatable charge by HMRC (from July 2011) so VAT will not be levied.
Flexible and real time data matching
The Audit Commission’s National Fraud Initiative (NFI) already plays an important role in protecting the public purse against fraud. The NFI can now do even more through our new flexible data matching service aimed at preventing as well as detecting fraud.
If you have any queries, or require more information, please contact us. We can provide a more comprehensive explanation of our service and offer demonstrations, etc, if necessary.
For more information on the data requirements for the above matching, please refer to Data specifications.