Egencia | An Expedia, Inc. Company

1. US organizations lose 7% of their annual revenues to fraud*. .
-In a recent poll, 68% of Travel Managers suspected expense fraud had occurred in their program**.
-The median loss for expense reimbursement fraud is $25,000*

2. Most travel fraud scenarios arise from Expense Reimbursement
Common corporate travel fraud scenarios include:
Scenario 1: Traveler books a flight, expenses the trip, and cancels. The ticket is either refunded or reused for personal use.
Scenario 2: Traveler books two flights - one refundable (more expensive) the other non-refundable (less expensive). The traveler expenses the refundable ticket and cancels it, then travels using the non-refundable ticket, keeping the difference.
Scenario 3: Traveler books a complex multi-leg flight. For example: JFK-ORD-SFO-ORD-JFK. The traveler expenses the full trip but cancels the ORD-SFO-ORD segments and pockets the refund.

3. Best place to target expense fraud is before the trip takes place.
Most travelers will make the right choices if the travel rules are clear and consistent.

Recommended Action: Establish flight policy tools to clearly set parameters for your travelers during the booking process. You can use visual guilt by flagging travel choices as out of policy based on factors such as:
- Flight: Cost of flight as compared to lowest logical fare, purchase window, booking class
- Hotel: Room rate in a particular city
- Car: Car size and rate

4. Use pre-trip approval and/or Out-of Policy notifications to get more oversight
Take advantage of Egencia's policy tools and reporting to stay on top of questionable travel choices.

Recommended Action:
-Leverage out-of policy notifications. Setting up e-mails to a manager or executive at your company whenever an out of policy purchase occurs is a powerful way to prevent travelers from making poor travel choices.
-Deploy TripController so that pre-trip approval is required before a trip is purchased.
-Use Egencia's Air Savings Detail Report to compare air purchases to the lowest logical fare available at the time of purchase . This is a great way to identify frequent policy abusers. Also, spot check complicated multi-leg trips and monitor unused tickets closely to see if and how they are redeemed.

5. Build trust by establishing Traveler-friendly policies
Some of the drivers of expense fraud are employees feeling that executives travel well but they are forced to sacrifice comfort. If travelers see viable options within policy such as reasonable flight durations and comfortable hotels, they will be less likely to look for ways to game the system. Travel policies that acknowledge that many business travelers just want to successfully conduct business and get home to their families as soon as possible, perform the best.
Questions? Contact us to learn more about preventing expense fraud in your travel program.

*Source: ACFE 2008 Report the the Nation
**Source: Poll conducted during 2008 Egencia webinar of over 200 travel managers.