Medius, a leading provider of AP Automation and wider Spend Management solutions, today announces a new Fraud & Risk Detection product to help businesses proactively prevent fraud, and gain greater visibility and more control across the invoice to pay lifecycle. The new solution extends existing risk and compliance controls within the Medius Suite.

The new product is introduced as research shows a rise in fraud risk, with a study from Cybersecurity Research finding that over half of organizations have experienced increases in fraud attempts in the last 12 months. Nearly 60% of respondents also indicated that finance teams are the most frequent victims of fraud and phishing attempts.

Medius Fraud & Risk Detection will save finance teams both time and money, building a crucial risk management and governance framework within a business. Using the latest advances in AI and Machine Learning, the product monitors for risk events within the invoice-to-pay process and alerts the right people to take action. The solution also features real-time analytics to enable teams to better understand the threats and to therefore preempt issues before they take place.

To protect AP teams against both internal and external fraud, Medius Fraud & Risk Detection detects anomalies and risk factors using AI across the invoice lifecycle. Online alerts provide transparency for users to spot fraud attempts like fake invoices or duplicate payments, and more sophisticated fraud schemes. Action can then be taken to remediate the potential risk immediately. Financial teams can consistently enforce their organization policies within one, unified process that meets their business needs.

The application offers new insights and visibility with Medius Fire Station Dashboard to alert finance leaders on risks within their AP process, ensuring leaders can examine specific risk types and profiles to continuously improve the security of AP and payment processes.

Crucially, the product is designed to prevent fraud or other risks like duplicate payments before it’s taken place, ensuring businesses are protected from the costly and difficult task of trying to recover stolen funds.  In the US, the average business loses approximately $300,000 to fraud every year.

Daniel Ball, EVP Product at Medius, says: “Over-burdened finance leaders need visibility across the invoice-to-pay process, and to feel confident in their ability to find and mitigate fraud within their businesses. Medius Fraud & Risk Detection helps businesses proactively manage the risk so they can prevent issues. This is so important for business leaders who are operating in challenging economic conditions, and who simply can’t afford the added and preventable costs of fraud.”

Kevin Permenter, Research Director, Financial Applications, IDC, says: “The real promise of AI and ML within autonomous finance is not just streamlining processes but eliminating them. Anomaly detection using AI and ML from solutions like Medius Fraud & Risk Detection helps to ensure policies are consistently and repeatedly being enforced giving CFOs new insights and data that they need in today’s volatile landscape.”