Launched this month at Retail Fraud – New York, the risk and loss prevention conference, the US Retail Fraud Survey 2015 has estimated that US retailers are losing $60 billion a year to shrink. That’s up from $57 Billion last year. The study identified employee theft as the single biggest cause of loss to retailers.
Published by Retail Knowledge and sponsored by the cash handling product company Volumatic for the third consecutive year, the Survey goes into the systems, processes and strategies of US retailers.
Paul Bessant of the event organisers Retail Knowledge said: “American retailers generally put losses owing to staff ahead of losses owing to external shrink. This is the opposite of the situation in the UK. As economic conditions continue to be tough for retailers and consumers alike, it is perhaps not surprising that employee theft is such a big problem. Perhaps the poor economic situation has led to good people making bad decisions…”
James Harris of Volumatic, the US Retail Fraud Survey sponsor, added: “I am confident that the outputs of this Survey will help the loss prevention community benchmark themselves against their contemporaries and identify opportunities to engage with their businesses, as well as each other, to win back some of the multi-billion dollar hole in profits that is being created through shrinkage.”
Whilst the survey reported average shrink as a percentage of sales at 1.27 per cent, very similar to last year, in cash terms this equates to an increase of $3 Billion this year. The survey found an increase in return fraud; up from an average of 0.25 per cent of sales last year to 0.31 per cent, as well as the increased fraudulent use of credit cards (66 per cent) up from 59 per cent last year.
