National Fraud Initiative: private sector services
Find out about the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) services available for private and voluntary sector organisations.
The NFI offers a number of different services that are available to all types of private sector and non-public sector organisations.
Fees for the services listed below are in this guide
Read case studies showing how the NFI has helped other organisations.
Services by organisation type
All organisations can benefit from NFI’s payroll screening and trade creditors screening. You may also be interested in our bespoke screening service.
Pension schemes
Our mortality screening service can identify where payments are being made to deceased pensioners or where deferred pensioners have died. It uses advanced data matching techniques which can replace the time and expense of sending life certification forms, and can identify deaths of UK citizens abroad as well as deaths in the UK.
Banks and financial institutions
The NFI can provide data screening services to help your organisation address financial fraud risks. All new applications for credit can be checked on a real time basis.
The NFI can also carry out retrospective checks of your existing customer data on a batch basis.
Voluntary sector
It is important for the voluntary sector that the money you have goes towards the charitable aims of your organisation. The NFI can help protect against fraud in this area by offering payroll and trade creditor screening services.
Payroll screening
Taking part in the NFI helps 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 employer at the same time.
Publicising participation in the NFI should act as a strong deterrent against fraudulent employment applications and employee identity fraud.
The NFI can help you identify:
- employees committing benefit fraud – The NFI can match your payroll data to local benefits data to identify employees who are potentially committing benefit fraud and may therefore also pose a serious fraud risk to your organisation (matches returned to the body paying the benefit for investigation)
- employees working elsewhere – your payroll data will be matched to other organisations taking part in the NFI to identify individuals who are claiming sick pay from your organisation while working elsewhere
Mortality screening
Pension schemes continue to pay out significant amounts to deceased pensioners each year. The NFI mortality screening service identifies deceased pensioners to help you prevent and recover these overpayments.
Matching to DWP’s deceased records is available every 6 months, with data submissions in June and November. This matches data against both the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP) deceased records and the Disclosure of Death Registration Information (DDRI) deceased persons’ records. The DWP holds details of the deaths of all UK citizens, including some of those who have died overseas. The DDRI is a list of deaths provided by the General Register Office of England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
For further information email nfiqueries@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Real time application screening
By matching data at the point of application, the NFI can identify anomalies that may indicate fraud before any payments are made. All new applications can be checked on a real time basis. Retrospective checks of your existing customer data can also be matched on a batch basis.
Housing tenant screening
The NFI identifies tenancy fraud at housing associations and/or other social housing providers as well as potential housing benefit fraud. In previous exercises, this has led to tenancies being terminated and properties re-allocated to genuine applicants on the housing waiting list who might otherwise have stayed in expensive temporary accommodation.
Housing tenant screening can:
- identify individuals who potentially have more than one property in their name
- ensure that tenants are only resident at one address, and aren’t claiming housing benefit for a different property
- make sure that Right To Buy/right to Acquire claimants qualify for the scheme
Trade creditors screening
The NFI trade creditor (suppliers of good and services) screening to identify:
- potential VAT overpayments on individual invoices – you may then be able to recover the overpayments
- duplicate payments – where you may have paid for the same goods or services more than once
- duplicate creditors – where you may have creditors set up more than once on your system, leading to inefficiency and duplicate payments
- instances where an employee and creditor are linked by the same bank account or the same address – this can identify employees who potentially have interests in companies your organisation is trading with
Aside from the financial benefits of trade creditor screening, data matching can also help you strengthen your internal control arrangements, by highlighting system weaknesses or common errors within your creditor data.
Bespoke services
The NFI data matching statutory powers allow data matching for the purpose of preventing or detecting fraud. To discuss any bespoke data matching you feel may address a particular fraud risk to your organisation by matching data that you hold to data that the NFI already collects, or to other data that we may be able to secure on your behalf, please email nfiqueries@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
How to get involved
To discuss your requirements or to take part please email nfiqueries@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
In advance, you can review the data you need to submit for the NFI and ensure that you can extract it from your systems.
You can also view fees for the services listed in this guide.
Last updated 16 June 2016 + show all updates
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Updated morality screening document.
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Update to Mortality screening dates
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First published.