How finance teams can use AI to stay ahead of AI-driven fraud

AI is giving fraudsters new ways to make false invoices, receipts, identities, and payment requests look legitimate. A supplier email asking for updated banking information may be followed by a convincing invoice, an urgent note from someone inside the company, or even a familiar-sounding voice message confirming the request.

The methods aren’t entirely new. What’s changed is how quickly fraudsters can create, personalize, and scale them.

The Finance Leaders’ Fraud Report 2026 from the Institute of Financial Operations and Leadership (IFOL) found that business email compromise remains the most common external fraud tactic, affecting 45% of respondents. Impersonation fraud rose from 35% in 2025 to 40% in 2026, while deepfake audio and video fraud appeared in the findings for the first time.

Finance teams are seeing the consequences. Sixty-two percent of respondents reported financial losses from fraud within the past three years, and less than a quarter felt very well protected by their current processes.

So how can finance teams keep up when their people are already stretched and manual review can only go so far? 

Rather than simply checking more transactions, they first need to understand how fraudsters are using AI, then put stronger systems in place to prevent, detect, and manage fraud across everyday spend processes.

AI is making familiar fraud harder to recognize

A fraudulent request used to be easier to spot when the details didn’t add up. The logo looked wrong. The message sounded unusual. The supporting document contained obvious errors.

AI can remove many of those warning signs.

Generative AI can create invoices and receipts with realistic layouts, line items, tax details, and supporting information. It can also help criminals impersonate suppliers, employees, and executives using details gathered from company websites, social media, and other public sources.

The different tactics can also work together. For example, a false invoice may be followed by an email from a compromised supplier account, then reinforced by an AI-generated voice message asking for immediate approval. Each step adds another layer of credibility and pressure.

This helps explain why fraud can be both frequent and difficult to detect. In the IFOL report, 19% of respondents said their business experiences fraud or attempted fraud frequently, while another 33% encounter it occasionally.

Despite this increase in AI-driven fraud, 59% of organizations said they still aren’t using AI in any spend management process. 

More manual checks isn’t the answer

Experienced reviewers will always play an important role in fraud prevention. The challenge is giving them a manageable amount of work and enough context to make good decisions.

When travel, expense, supplier, invoice, corporate card and p-card information sits in separate systems, reviewers see only part of the picture. A transaction may look reasonable on its own even though it’s unusual for that employee or supplier. Small, repeated issues can also be missed when reports and invoices are reviewed one at a time.

Spot checks leave much of the activity unseen, while after-the-fact audits may uncover a problem only after money has gone out. Adding more manual reviews, meanwhile, can slow approvals without necessarily helping teams identify the most important risks.

Fraud protection works better when checks are built into the process, from the moment someone books travel or submits an expense to the point when an invoice is approved for payment. 

With finance teams already stretched, AI can help extend those checks across more transactions without adding the same amount of manual review. In fact, 55% of CFOs expect AI to catch more errors and potential fraud than their teams currently do. 

Where AI-enabled spend management can make a proven difference

Finance teams can use AI in four practical ways to strengthen fraud prevention:

1. Using AI to help people make better choices earlier

The best time to address a questionable transaction is before it reaches an approver.

AI-enabled travel and expense solutions can bring policy guidance into the employee’s regular workflow. Employees can receive policy-aligned recommendations, answers to questions, and prompts for missing information while they’re booking travel or preparing an expense.

Joule, an AI assistant for SAP Concur, can also help employees with expense report creation while providing guidance based on company policy. This reduces the chance that incomplete or non-compliant expenses will move forward and gives reviewers cleaner information to work with.

Stronger oversight doesn’t have to come at the expense of efficiency, either. In fact, organizations using SAP Concur solutions reported an average 28% increase in policy compliance while processing 1.5x more expense reports per month than non-users.

2. Using AI to validate documents and transaction data

A convincing-looking document shouldn’t be the final word on whether a transaction is legitimate.

AI and automation can extract and validate information from receipts and invoices, identify missing details, compare records, and flag unusual activity before approval. Machine learning can also analyze spending patterns and recognize issues that may not stand out during a visual review.

For SAP Concur solution users, the benefits are measurable:

• 10x more errors and fraud captured with AI¹
• 55% faster expense report auditing²
• 93% less time spent approving rejected expense reports³

3. Using AI to focus human attention where it matters

Reviewers shouldn’t have to treat every transaction as equally risky.

AI can analyze large volumes of spend data and route higher-risk items for a closer look. Routine transactions can move through the process with less manual effort, while unusual amounts, duplicate documents, policy exceptions, and suspicious patterns receive more attention.

Solis Mammography has already seen how automation can reduce the amount of manual review required. Jesse Cox, AP and T&E manager, explains:

“The compliance process without Concur would be quite honestly a nightmare. It would be manual review of almost every piece of paper that came through my team's queues. We would probably have to triple our team size at least — just to deal with the review, not even processing invoices.”

Solis also uses reporting to look beyond individual invoices. By aggregating data, its AP team can spot changes that deserve attention, such as a supplier that normally bills $1,000 suddenly submitting an invoice for $100,000. The difference may be legitimate, an error, or something more concerning. The important part is that the change becomes visible.

4. Using AI to connect and accelerate spend processes

A payment request is easier to assess when finance can see the supplier, employee, policy, approval history, invoice, card transaction, and previous spending pattern around it.

SAP Concur solutions connect travel, expense, and invoice information on one platform, with AI and automation embedded throughout the process. Instead of piecing together information from separate inboxes, spreadsheets, and applications, finance teams get a more complete view of what happened and what doesn’t look right.

Coulson Aviation has seen the practical value of that visibility across its spend management workflow. As Assistant Controller Courtney Schut explains:

“We can see exactly where a PO or invoice is in the process. Nothing gets lost in email anymore.”

Having Concur Expense, Concur Travel, and Concur Invoice in the same environment also simplifies administration and training. Shared configurations, familiar approval processes, and one ERP integration make it easier to extend controls across more of the company’s spend.

Start where risk and manual work overlap

Finance teams don’t need to change every spend process at once. A practical place to begin is where people spend the most time checking information manually but still don’t have full confidence in the result.

Look for processes that rely heavily on email, spreadsheets, or visual review, such as supplier changes, receipt verification, invoice matching, and unusual payment approvals. From there, define the information and approvals required, then apply AI and automation to help validate data, identify exceptions, and direct attention to higher-risk activity.

Starting with one clear use case makes it easier to measure the impact, learn what works, and extend stronger controls across more of the spend process.

Resources to help you take the next step

For understanding emerging fraud threats:

• Finance Leaders’ Fraud Report 2026
  See what finance and AP teams are experiencing, including changes in attack methods, financial losses, training, controls, and AI adoption.
• How to Prevent Fraud in an AI-Driven World
  Explore emerging fraud risks, the role of technology and human oversight, and five steps for improving risk management.
• Combating AI Fraud: A Guide for Finance Leaders
  Learn how finance leaders can bring operational controls, governance, training, and technology together.

For strengthening your spend management process:

• From survival to scale: Why now is the time to digitize your invoices
  Find out how modern invoice management can help AP teams validate data, flag issues earlier, improve visibility, and maintain audit-ready records.
• AI-Powered Accounts Payable Automation Buyer’s Guide
  Compare capabilities, plan for implementation, and use 10 practical questions to assess providers.
• How to Choose the Right Travel and Expense Management Solution
  Review the integration, AI, audit, policy, reporting, security, and scalability capabilities to consider when evaluating a platform.
• Spend Management: A Practical AI Use Case That IT Teams Can Deploy with Confidence
  Explore how embedded AI can improve spend processes without adding custom development or a larger maintenance burden for IT.

You’re ahead with SAP Concur

Employees shouldn’t have to become experts at identifying every fabricated invoice, altered receipt, false identity, or deepfake message. They need processes that verify information, apply policy consistently, bring the right data together, and make unusual activity easier to question. 

With AI-enabled fraud prevention solutions from SAP Concur embedded across travel, expense, and invoice processes, your finance team can review more spend, respond earlier, and focus their attention where it matters most.

1. SAP Concur ROI Research, Global & Regional Findings, Phronesis Partners, 2024

2. What Customers Really Gain: The Business Value and ROI of Concur Travel and Expense, IDC, 2026

3. SAP Concur Discovery Center