A typical organization loses 5% of its annual revenue to fraud. Small organizations, which tend to lack systematic control mechanisms, lose even more. $32 million in heavy construction equipment alone is stolen in Canada each year. The vast majority is never recovered... 

Internal control often takes a back seat to running your business, but there a few easy steps that you can take to reduce your risk. Here are five... 

Some interesting points from a white paper on the Privacy and Data Security Exposures of Small and Mid-Sized Companies, published by Advisen Insurance Intelligence:

• During the first six months of 2012, more than a third of targeted attacks on businesses were directed towards companies with fewer than 250 employees.
• Almost every company will have important data lost or stolen, whether the result of an attack by a hacker, a lost memory stick or smartphone, or a stolen laptop.
• The cost of a data breach is an average of $194 per record, which means even a small business can run up a tab in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars as a consequence of a data breach. 

The following is an interesting read on Human Capital Risk. Human capital refers to the stock of competences, knowledge and personality attributes embodied in the workforce that has the ability to produce economic value. A workforce that can lead to increased production, innovation and good word of mouth advertising is more valuable and less risky than one with lack of job performance and employee turnover that would result in missed business opportunities and increased costs. It is important, therefore, that you, as a business owner, keep your employees. They are your business. 

By now any organization in Alberta holding a Safety Fitness Certificate will have received notification of changes to the method of calculating the Risk Factor Score for the Carrier Profile. There are several key changes to the process that all organizations need to be familiar with...