Singapore businesses must be proactive to combat rise of AI-enabled fraud: Opinion
Source: Business Times
Article Date: 21 May 2026
Firms small and large must start with meticulous, compliant accounting and finance processes.
Across Asia, all businesses – including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large listed companies – are increasingly vulnerable to fraud.
Kroll’s 2025 Financial Crime Report found that 76 per cent of Singapore executives surveyed expect their risk of financial crime to increase. Yet, only 26 per cent strongly believe their company is equipped to deal with it.
To close the capability gap in dealing with fraud, businesses must improve their financial visibility, enforce basic controls, and regularly review their accounting systems and IT procedures.
Growing threat
The rise of fraud is being fuelled by several key drivers. Two-thirds of global executives surveyed by Kroll reported cybersecurity and data breaches, along with the increased usage of artificial intelligence and deepfakes by criminals, as top factors for increased fraud risk.
The sophistication of social engineering scams using deepfake AI impersonation is also evolving. The average person can now generate hyper-realistic images and videos using generative AI platforms such as Google’s Gemini Nano Banana and OpenAI’s Sora.
In May 2026, a Singapore businessman lost at least S$4.9 million after scammers used deepfake AI technology to impersonate Prime Minister Lawrence Wong as well as local and overseas government officials in a video conference.
The elaborate scam requested urgent funds to assist with the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, and also involved a fake WhatsApp message from the secretary to the Cabinet and a fabricated government letter of guarantee bearing the prime minister’s signature.
Multinational firm Arup fell prey to a scam in 2024, where a finance officer remitted HK$200 million (S$32.7 million) to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as their chief financial officer and colleagues.
AI-enabled fraud has become pervasive and bold – and the threat will only continue to grow. In fact, reported deepfake scam cases spiked by 1,500 per cent in Singapore and 1,900 per cent in Hong Kong between 2024 and 2025, according to Sumsub.
Fraud in Asia is punishable under general laws such as Hong Kong’s Theft Ordinance or Singapore’s Penal Code. Singapore has also begun legislation for deepfake crimes by embedding them into other laws such as the Online Criminal Harms Act 2023, where the authorities can compel social media platforms to remove deepfakes used for scams or harassment.
In November 2025, the Criminal Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act was passed, enhancing punishments for scams.
Criminal deterrence is just one part of the solution. And it is not just the technology that has advanced. The corroborative nature of these attacks – where even the tone and language of client e-mails are mimicked to avoid suspicion – evades the human eye, intuition and lacklustre accounting practices.
Effective fraud prevention and response
To prevent fraud, businesses need to start by looking inward. Many cases of fraud involve trusted insiders such as employees.
Most insider fraud takes root because financial controls are not effective, and there is no sensible process to assess the robustness of the financial control framework.
Smaller businesses are more likely to have weak controls due to poor separation of duties and limited staff training. When there is a lack of oversight over payments, undetected insider fraud perpetuated by trusted employees over long periods of time becomes a risk.
But all companies, no matter the size, can implement effective fraud prevention measures. Regular reviews of financial data are a good starting point, and accessible accounting software makes these inspections easy to manage.
Consistent accounting processes are the cornerstone of fraud prevention, and certainly more affordable than a full-blown investigation after the horse has bolted.
Multiple payments to the same account? Your accountant should be able to make sense of raw financial data, flag inconsistencies and recommend simple review rhythms, such as monthly payment audits to protect your business.
Where fraudulent activity is already suspected, the combined efforts of a financial investigation and accounting firm working together can aid recovery efforts and reduce future risks.
What is often missing in fraud response is actually continuity. Post-discovery, businesses are left scrambling to rebuild systems and trust.
By working hand in hand, forensic investigators and accountants not only pinpoint wrongdoing, but also rebuild operational clarity.
In a recent case we worked on, financial investigators supported the affected business by uncovering the fraudulent transactions and quantum involved. Accountants worked alongside the investigators as independent and trusted advisers to the business.
The accountants replaced the perpetrator – in this case, a formerly trusted financial controller – and implemented processes and controls that allowed management to more easily monitor the business, thereby reducing the risk of fraud in the future.
This approach meant the business could re-establish control without losing momentum or morale.
All businesses are susceptible to fraud. The advances in AI will only continue to power more convincing impersonation attacks, such as invoice fraud and fake supplier accounts.
One possible medication for this AI fraud malaise is what traditional Chinese medicine refers to as “fighting poison with poison”. AI tools can detect and flag fraudulent patterns that may be invisible to the human eye.
The first step, however, is always meticulous and compliant accounting and finance processes. Businesses, in particular resource-strapped SMEs, need to regularly review their payments and question inconsistencies.
If the complexity of your finance processes has grown beyond your team, consider getting external accounting support. And if there are any signs of fraud, a forensic investigator can stop any outflows and trace misappropriated assets.
Paul Gardner is CEO of Fresh Accounting and Bruno Arboit is Hong Kong managing director at Kroll
Source: The Business Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
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