👓 June’s Resilience Brief: Defending SMEs Against Transfer Fraud – A Leadership Playbook

Bonjour ☕

This edition of La tech est politique presents April’s Resilience Brief for SMEs: how to defend against financial (transfer) fraud. This Brief is a leadership playbook every SME needs to face the avalanche of fraud attempts.

Why it matters

Transfer fraud prevention involves controlling who can initiate, modify, or approve a payment, through which channels, to which recipients, and at what pace. It draws the line between controlled cash flows and irreversible fund outflows. Beyond banking tools, it includes out-of-band verification, dual validation, cooling-off periods, recipient whitelisting, IBAN-name check/Confirmation of Payee (where available), and decision traceability.

Transfer fraud prevention, therefore, constitutes the strategic cornerstone of SME financial resilience. Far from being a purely “IT” matter or an accounting routine, it embodies leadership’s ability to neutralise urgency and secrecy—the driving forces behind “false orders” and “CEO WhatsApp” scams—through simple rules, systematically applied.

This Resilience Brief explains the decision-making mechanisms that transform an organisational attack surface into operational and reputational advantage: how to embed the right to say no, impose out-of-band verification, frame exceptional payments, and make anti-fraud controls a governance reflex rather than a constraint.

In brief—why invest and how to drive the transformation

Fraudulent wire transfer orders have become an existential risk for European SMEs:

• Losses are primarily borne by the issuer (especially in “authorised” transfers). Recovery after execution is limited, and instant payments further reduce the intervention window.

• Attacks exploit the management chain (CEO/COO/CFO, treasury, executive assistants, project managers) and favour urgency, secrecy and channels outside audited tools (WhatsApp/SMS/Slack).

• Stakes: unrecovered losses destabilise cash and operations; many SMEs cannot absorb a major financial incident without a significant impact.

• Pragmatic prevention = strategic investment: systematic out‑of‑band verification, a culture of the right to say no (backed by the CEO), graduated dual validation, non‑compressible delays for any new recipient or IBAN change, and IBAN‑name check/Confirmation of Payee wherever possible.

The fraud landscape targeting senior management

Fraudulent wire transfer orders are a leading source of loss in the EU. Many cases stem from payer manipulation (a classic “CEO scam”) without compromising IT systems. The financial burden of authorised push payment (APP) fraud often falls on the payer, making prevention before issuance essential. Cross-border and remote transactions are overrepresented; risk increases whenever the recipient or order deviates from official channels. The speed of instant payments limits recall—pre‑issuance prevention becomes decisive.

What you’ll learn in this Resilience Brief

• The attack patterns behind CEO scams and authorised push payment fraud

• Role clarity and segregation of duties across leadership, finance, procurement and operations

• A compact control set: out‑of‑band verification, dual approval tiers, cooling‑off, whitelists, CoP/IBAN checks and traceability

• How to frame “exceptional” payments without creating loopholes

• Communication templates and decision logs that protect people under pressure

• A practical, staged roadmap to embed controls

Who this is for

• SME owners, CEOs and boards accountable for financial resilience

• CFOs/COOs, treasury and accounting leaders

• Executive assistants and operational managers who handle urgent requests

Get the Resilience Brief

Turn high‑risk moments into controlled decisions. Align roles, set simple rules that hold under pressure and deploy pragmatic controls that stop losses before they occur. Get the premium Resilience Brief on Transfer Fraud Prevention.

FAQ

• What is CEO fraud/APP fraud? Social engineering that induces staff to authorise a genuine transfer to a criminal’s account—often without any IT compromise.

  Who bears the loss? Often the payer, especially in authorised transfers. This makes pre‑issuance controls critical.

  Aren’t bank tools enough? Banking controls help, but attackers exploit urgency and side channels. Independent verification, dual approval and delays for new recipients are essential.

  Does this apply outside the EU? Yes, the principles are broadly applicable.

  Will controls slow us down? Properly tiered, they protect high‑risk payments while keeping routine flows efficient.

What Now? This guide has been designed to provide concrete, accessible, cost-effective actions that can be implemented immediately.