the inaugural conference of
The Midlands Fraud Forum

Thursday 21st February 2008
Birmingham Botanical Gardens





The Midlands Fraud Forum is a not for profit organisation which has been established to promote fraud awareness and to enable all of us to better respond to fraud risks.

All organisations face the risk of fraud, from both internal and external sources, whether they be in the public or private sector, and large or small. We all know that fraud, although difficult to measure, is a major burden on the UK economy. In the end, we all lose out to fraud. Not limited to financial losses, fraud can undermine public trust and cause damange to an organisation’s reputation for integrity. Therefore, responding to the risk of fraud has never been more important. Indeed, it is a critical governance issue that should be at the forefront of the senior manager’s agenda.

The Midlands Fraud Forum has been established to assist in the fight against fraud. Our aim is provide an industry-led initiative involving the public and private sectors to reduce fraud by:

increasing awareness of fraud;

communicating the risk; and

promoting best practice in countering fraud.

We are launching the Midlands Fraud Forum with this, our inaugural conference, and we would be delighted to welcome you to the event, and to membership of our organisation. Participating in the conference will enable you to find out more about our aims, objectives and plans, and to learn how you can benefit from being involved. It will also be a great opportunity to meet like-minded people who are involved in the fight against fraud.

For our conference we have brought together a panel of expert speakers, who will share with you their insights into current and future trends in many different types of fraud, how your business can be affected on a day-to-day basis – and what you can do about it.

We very much hope that you will want to join your fellow anti-fraud practitioners from the Midlands region and beyond, to combine all our efforts in strengthening the fight against financial crime. I look forward to meeting you at the conference, and to welcoming you to membership of the Midlands Fraud Forum.



Simon Dwyer
Chairman
Midlands Fraud Forum