From risk to resilience: How treasury automation mitigates fraud

• Fraud is evolving fast, with APP fraud, BEC, and deepfakes posing serious threats to corporate treasuries, potentially leading to financial loss and reputational damage.
• Treasury automation enhances fraud prevention by reducing manual errors, improving compliance, and streamlining documentation—transforming treasurers into proactive risk managers.
• Global regulatory momentum is building, urging corporates to adopt always-on fraud monitoring, behavioural analytics, and standardised workflows to stay ahead of sophisticated scams.

In today’s fast-evolving financial landscape, corporate treasurers are facing mounting pressure—not just to manage liquidity and risk, but to defend their organisations against increasingly sophisticated fraud. As scams like Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud and deepfake impersonations surge globally, the treasury function is emerging as a critical line of defence. In this first instalment of LSEG’s three-part webinar series focused on Corporates, we explore how treasury automation is becoming a powerful tool in the fight against financial crime, helping treasurers shift from reactive responders to proactive protectors.

The incidence and sophistication of scams and fraud attempts across the globe continues to grow, and corporate treasurers are increasingly finding themselves at the centre of the storm.

In addition to their core responsibilities, treasurers are frequently called upon to investigate missing funds and ensure payment compliance – but legacy systems that rely on manual processes mean that this work is often time-consuming and complex.

In our latest on-demand webinar, Aravind Narayan, Director, Proposition – Digital Identity & Fraud, LSEG, says that the sheer scale of global fraud should ring alarm bells for corporates. In particular he calls out Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, a type of scam where a fraudster deceives a victim into authorising a payment under false pretences. Different countries use a variety of names for this type of fraud, including relationship and trust scams and credit push fraud.

Global APP fraud losses could reach a staggering US$331bn by 2027 

The impact of APP fraud on treasury is potentially substantial. Sophisticated fraudsters can trick treasurers into releasing funds to illicit parties – with potentially far-reaching consequences, from the erosion of trust to reputational damage, financial implications, and more.

In addition, Business Email Compromise (BEC), deepfakes and other forms of financial crime are adding layers of complexity to treasury roles. For example, deepfake impersonation attacks are able to accurately mimic voices, faces, and even writing styles with levels of sophistication that make the attack difficult to detect.

Treasury automation offers hands-on help, from improving cash visibility and reducing risk, to enabling faster, more efficient collaboration with banks and regulators. The result: treasurers move from reactive problem-solvers to proactive financial leaders.

Dan Levine, Head of Americas – FX Sales, LSEG contends that risk mitigation starts with automation right at the get-go, when trades are keyed in, commenting, “By replacing the manual keying-in of trades – which can be prone to human error or so-called “fat fingers” – into any trading system, automated processes immediately mitigate a lot of the risk inherent in trading. The right workflows can strengthen compliance by eliminating much of the potential for fraud.”

Mitigating post-trade risk is also vital and having settlement instructions locked into the system in an automated manner lowers the risk of payment problems further down the line. 

Grace Ong, Head of Proposition – Corporates, LSEG further highlights that treasury audits can be painful and time-consuming if the right documentation is not in place. Documentation is key in any audit situation as it offers proof of process, and this is another important area where automated workflows can help, for example, by delivering standardised documents as verifiable proof to auditors that standards have been maintained and processes followed. 

The key message is this: secure automated systems are essential to lower risk in the treasury function. Fraudsters don’t attack systems, they attack individuals, because humans are the weakest link in the equation.