National fraud initiative (NFI) creditors – “claim, vet and match”

Ray Dorney talks us through Rockford Associates Limited’s Accounts Payable Recovery Audits used to detect and prevent overpayments in the public sector and beyond

The National Fraud Initiative (NFI) matches data from 1,300 public sector and 77 private sector organisations, including police authorities, local probation boards, fire and rescue authorities as well as local councils, NHS Trusts and other agencies. It flags up inconsistencies in data that may indicate fraud, errors, and potential overpayments, signalling the need for participating organisations to further review those findings, conduct internal investigation with Accounts Payable Recovery Audits and implement any necessary corrective actions – which is no small task.

NFI Data Matches

The main NFI matching exercise takes place every two years, whilst Council Tax and Electoral Register matching takes place annually. Participating organisations submit data to a secure website.

The NFI system matches data within and between bodies to identify potential anomalies, referred to as ‘matches’. ‘Matches’ are made available to participating organisations for them to review, investigate and record outcomes from those investigations.

NFI Motives

Good motives underpin NFI match reports, and this article places the spotlight firmly on NFI Creditor and Duplicate Payment reports.

They help prevent or detect fraud, support good governance, provide transparency, and essentially assist provide greater scrutiny of Tax-Payer spends.

NFI Dilemma

Theoretically the NFI reports are a WIN-WIN for participant organisations; they deliver the identification of potential errors and positive reassurance no errors exist. The issue or NFI dilemma arises with the sheer size of some reports.

These may contain matches that are “false positives” or potential “duplicate payments” which may have already been corrected. Despite this internal staff are compelled to vet and address each matched line item.

Accounts Payable teams are frequently under time pressures and resources stretched to maximum working capacity.

Few if any, have the desire or wish to divert valuable and often expensive resources to the rather mundane task of investigating data matches and potential duplicate payments which may prove to be “false positives”. The match reports are simply the first step in a process of queries.

Those yards get even harder when valuable time is absorbed verifying and validating if a duplicate or overpayment has taken place and organisations find themselves under time pressure to report back their findings to the NFI. This is before any recovery, claims from
suppliers can even commence which in of itself, can often be measured in months rather than weeks.

12,000 NFI line matches for just one client

To help provide an indication of scale participating organisations are compelled to investigate NFI matches and where Rockford delivers regular risk-free Accounts Payable Recovery Audits, it provides an ideal opportunity to “lighten that load” and assign the mundane task to us.

Over 2 months, we analysed and reported on over 12,000 NFI line matches for a single client mapping their NFI matches with our Accounts Payable Recovery Audit.

This enabled the update and reporting of findings to the NFI within project timescale. Moreover, it provided time to “deliver the day job” and apply corrective actions to their respective payable ledgers.

So how can Rockford help?

A “Belt & Braces Approach”

From an Accounts Payable and duplicated payments perspective, NFI creditor reports are similar to Rockford’s “Pathfinder” data mining outputs. Potential duplicated supplier reports also mirror our Electronic Data Analysis Reports. Dual vetting provides a “belt and braces” approach with errors highly unlikely to escape the scrutiny of two systems.