National Fraud Initiative: additional public services
Find out about extra NFI services available for public sector organisations, such as ReCheck and the AppCheck.
Many of the risks addressed by the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) are also relevant to central government departments, agencies, arm’s length bodies (ALBs) and other organisations, such as housing associations, academies and community rehabilitation companies. This guide lists the services that are available to such public sector organisations as voluntary participants under Schedule 9, 3 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. Screening is carried out every 2 years (with data submission usually in October).
You can also read case studies showing how the NFI has helped other organisations.
Services by sector
Central government, academies and community rehabilitation companies
Central government, (including agencies or ALBs), academies and community rehabilitation companies can share the benefits of the NFI data matching by submitting payroll and trade creditors’ data. This screening can help to identify a range of issues. For example, employees committing benefit fraud or working elsewhere, VAT overpayments, duplicate trade creditor payments or employees with interests in companies your organisation is trading with.
Should your organisation identify a particular fraud risk that the NFI might help you address through data matching, please email nfiqueries@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Housing associations
Housing associations can share the benefits of the NFI data matching by submitting payroll, trade creditor payments, current housing tenant and tenants that have completed or are in the process of completing Right to Buy.
Housing associations that submit data relating to tenants that have completed or are in the process of completing Right to Buy can identify tenants who are:
- illegally subletting social housing
- illegally claiming benefits they are not entitled to (these matches would go back to the council paying the benefits)
- abusing the ‘Right to Acquire’ scheme
- making invalid applications for social housing
By identifying this type of fraud social houses can be recovered for allocation to individuals that need them.
AppCheck
Every application you receive carries a risk that the person has failed to declare all of the relevant information. As a result, they receive a benefit, service or employment they are not entitled to. AppCheck provides a real-time authentication process across your organisation as a whole. This minimises the costly investigations that would have followed once a fraud is detected.
AppCheck can help at the point of application to ensure only those with a genuine entitlement get the services they need.
AppCheck can be used to detect fraud in the following areas:
- Tenants subletting
- Right to Buy/Acquire
- Tenancy succession
- Council Tax Single Person Discount
- Employees that have not disclosed other business interests
- Concessionary travel pass
- Re-housing applications
To find out more about AppCheck please email helpdesk@nfi.gov.uk
ReCheck
ReCheck is a flexible data matching service that complements the NFI biennial national exercise. This service allows you to re-perform all of the existing NFI data matching, except trade creditor payments reports, at a time that suits you. You control when you upload your organisation’s datasets for internal matching. The service includes data from the most recent NFI exercise, as well as refreshed housing benefit, student loans and Amberhill police data.
The service:
- responds to your operational needs and organisational risks, allowing you to decide how often you re-perform matching
- will help detect fraud either in your organisation or across multiple organisations that choose to come together as part of a data matching syndicate
- generates high quality data matches and makes them available immediately
- is undertaken using existing statutory data matching powers under part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 and follows the Code of Data Matching Practice
Subscribers to ReCheck pay an additional fee per dataset submitted and a separate fee applies to ReCheck mortality screening.
Mortality screening
Mortality screening can help organisations identify, for example, pensioners, blue badge holders, concessionary pass holders and applicants on a housing waiting list that are deceased. Doing so can highlight potentially fraudulent activity and/or overpayments that can subsequently be recovered.
The NFI offers mortality screening against the following:
- Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) deceased data which includes details of the deaths of all UK citizens, including some of those that have died overseas. The data also includes National Insurance numbers to improve the accuracy of the resulting matches. *Disclosure of Death Registration Information (DDRI) – a list of deaths provided by the General Register Office (GRO) of England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Read some practical examples of how ReCheck and mortality screening can be used.
Timescales
Mortality screening to DWP deceased persons data takes place every 6 months, with data submissions in June and November.
Mortality screening to GRO DDRI data can be carried out at any point throughout the year by uploading your data to NFI ReCheck. Data is refreshed every two weeks.
For further information please email nfiqueries@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Payroll screening
The NFI can help you to identify individuals who may be committing employment fraud by failing to work their contracted hours because they are employed elsewhere or are taking long-term sickness absence from one employer and working for another at the same time.
Publicising participation in the NFI should act as a strong deterrent against fraudulent employment applications and employee identity fraud.
Trade creditor screening
As part of the biennial national exercise, we provide trade creditor payment screening (suppliers of goods and services) and have developed a range of tests to identify duplicate payments. Aside from the financial benefits, data matches help to improve the efficiency of organisations’ trade creditor payment systems.
The NFI can help you identify duplicate payments and incorrect VAT payments that can be recovered, caused by incorrect supplier invoices, input errors and VAT miscalculations. The reasons for this are wide ranging, from human error to poor processes, controls that can be overridden and the fact that accounting systems can only carry out basic checks.
The matching can also help to strengthen your internal control arrangements, by highlighting system weaknesses or common errors within your trade creditor data. For example, we may identify multiple occurrences of the same trade creditor with different reference numbers or differently spelt organisation names.
How to get involved
To discuss your requirements or to take part please email nfiqueries@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. You can also look at the data specifications guide, which sets out the data you would need to submit for screening.
The fees for the services are listed in this guide.
Bespoke services
The NFI data matching statutory powers allow data matching for the purpose of preventing and detecting fraud. If you have a data set the NFI has not already collected that you feel may address a particular fraud risk to your organisation and therefore wish to carry out a data match, please email nfiqueries@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Updates to this page
Last updated 16 June 2016 + show all updates
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Updated information on National Fraud Initiative's additional public services.
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Update to Flexible mortality screening timescales
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Added document about the Application Checker
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First published.