CARY — November 13, 2026 -- Only 7% of anti-fraud professionals say their organizations are more than moderately prepared for AI-driven fraud, according to research by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) and SAS. That is roughly one in 14 respondents, and the same study found that just 25% of organizations use AI or machine learning to fight fraud.
In the study, 77% of surveyed anti-fraud professionals reported rising deepfake social engineering. ACFE President and CEO John Warren says fraudsters have adopted AI faster than most of the teams trying to stop them. The findings are published ahead of International Fraud Awareness Week, Nov. 15-21.
Financial institutions converge detection tools far more often than governance
FRAML research by Datos Insights and SAS found that 86% of financial institutions report missed links between fraud and money laundering. While 71% are converging detection technology, only 13% are aligning governance, policies and organizational structure. By our calculation, that is a gap of 58 percentage points.
SAS Senior Vice President Stu Bradley says one team sees the risky application, another the fraudulent payment and a third the money-laundering alert. With disparate data, systems and workflows, he says, a scheme can hide in plain sight.
Upcoming research in SAS' Trust and Transparency series finds that 77% of surveyed public sector leaders say fraud-fighting challenges have increased and evolved faster over the past year.
A western US state estimates $1.2 million in SNAP savings since March
Several US states have selected SAS Payment Integrity for Food Assistance. The tool, built on SAS Viya, gives caseworkers monthly risk scores for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cases. The scores rank cases by likelihood of error and dollar amount at risk. One western state, which deployed it in March, estimates it has saved more than $1.2 million. SAS did not name the states or disclose contract values.
A European bank scores up to 500,000 daily transactions in milliseconds
The bank runs SAS Financial Crimes Analytics on SAS Viya, hosted on its own Amazon Web Services shared cluster. The platform draws on account behavior, device and session data, and payee checks. Integrated alert and case management routes transactions needing closer scrutiny to investigators.
An Asia Pacific insurer facing a surge in fraudulent receipt images had SAS build a synthetic image detection tool. It combines computer vision, text extraction and AI reasoning. It accepts images that pass screening, rejects identified fakes and sends uncertain cases to human review, highlighting areas of potential tampering.
SAS says the same risk extends to lenders and government agencies. In February, Australia's largest bank referred about A$1 billion in suspected home loan fraud to authorities amid allegations that include AI-generated income statements.
ACFE and SAS will host a webinar, The Next Threat Curve: Financial Crime Risk in the Age of Autonomous AI, on Nov. 18 at 10 a.m. ET. Experts from SAS and KPMG will discuss agentic AI and fraud controls, investigations and governance. It is open to ACFE members and non-members.