Fraud rarely announces itself. It does not arrive with cinematic drama or digital fireworks. It slips in through gaps in information: an inactive company that looks legitimate enough, a new trading partner whose ownership trail disappears after two layers, or a supplier that survived on promises rather than solvency. Fraud thrives wherever data is outdated, incomplete, or never checked in the first place.
Across global B2B dealings, organisations encounter this weakness daily. They want to trust new suppliers, distributors, or corporate clients. They want efficient onboarding. Yet trust built on assumption rather than verified data is the most common gateway for fraud. The scale of the problem shows why.
The Association for Financial Professionals reported that approximately 79 percent of organisations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2024. Research from PYMNTS showed around 80 percent of firms were targeted by payment fraud within a single year. Trustpair’s analysis found that 56 percent of companies experienced fraud attempts in 2022, with a notable share facing more than ten attempts. These numbers mirror a wider truth: most fraud succeeds because verification fails.
Cedar Rose’s work sits exactly in this gap. Reliable business intelligence, accurate corporate data, KYB verification, UBO identification, sanctions and PEP screening, financial insight, and ongoing monitoring, gives organisations the visibility they need to stop fraud long before a transaction begins. Instead of reacting to a problem, organisations using Cedars Rose’s data prevent it.
Where B2B Fraud Finds Its Openings
Fraud does not usually emerge from sophisticated cybercrime. It emerges from something simpler: obscurity. When an organisation cannot answer basic questions about a partner, risk multiplies.
Common vulnerabilities include:
Undisclosed or hidden ownership
Shell companies or proxy directors mask the involvement of high-risk individuals. Without UBO data, the true identity of a business partner remains unknown.
Inactive, dissolved, or non-existent companies
Fraudsters often reactivate inactive companies or create synthetic entities to conduct one-off transactions and disappear.
Financial instability hidden behind clean paperwork
A company may be legally registered yet in severe financial distress. This is one of the strongest predictors of non-performance or deliberate fraud.
Cross-border opacity
A distributor incorporated in one jurisdiction may trade in another, bank in a third, and be owned from a fourth. Without global coverage, organisations miss vital warning signs.
This is why reliable business data is not a convenience. It is the foundation of operational safety.
Why Organisations Still Rely on Weak Data
Despite the risks, many companies still rely on:
- Outdated registry data that may not reflect recent changes.
- Self-declared documents that cannot be independently verified.
- Manual checks that take too long and miss subtle patterns.
- Public databases with limited MEA and emerging market coverage.
- One-time checks that do not detect evolving risk.
This problem is especially visible in regions where public registries are fragmented, politically sensitive, or updated infrequently. It is also visible in industries that onboard thousands of corporate partners each year.
Cedar Rose was built precisely to solve this problem. With deep regional expertise, advanced data collection, multilingual investigation, and coverage across 230+ jurisdictions and 479 million companies, Cedar Rose equips organisations with a level of visibility that public data simply cannot offer.
Reliable Business Data: How Fraud Prevention Begins
Reliable business data reshapes fraud prevention by shifting discovery earlier, before onboarding, before contracting, and before payments move.
Corporate Identity Verification
Cedar Rose verifies whether a company truly exists, is active, and is legally authorised to trade. This includes:
- Registration checks
- Corporate structure
- Activity status
- Legal filings
- Cross-border consistency
This eliminates the most common fraud tactic: presenting a business identity that collapses upon scrutiny.
Beneficial Ownership (UBO) Identification
Understanding ownership is one of the most powerful anti-fraud measures. Cedar Rose’s UBO tracing uncovers:
- Hidden beneficial owners
- Cross-border ownership structures
- Links to dissolved or blacklisted companies
- Persons with political or sanctions exposure
Fraudsters depend on hiding themselves. UBO data removes that cover.
Sanctions, PEP and Adverse Media Screening
Cedar Rose screens for:
- Global sanctions lists (UN, EU, OFAC, HMT and more)
- Politically exposed persons
- High-risk roles and affiliations
- Negative media involving corruption, fraud, money laundering or litigation
Fraud is not always about the company. Sometimes it is about the people behind it. These checks bring those individuals into view.
Financial Health and Credit Risk Indicators
Financial distress and fraud often walk in parallel. Cedar Rose provides:
- Credit scores
- Payment performance insight
- Balance sheet indicators
- Trade references
- Court and legal records (already available under Due Diligence services, with expanded coverage currently in development for credit reports)
A supplier with unstable finances can default without warning. A partner with poor payment history can become a liability overnight.
Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD)
For higher-risk cases, Cedar Rose conducts deep investigation:
- Source verification
- Manual research, site visits and interviews on ground
- Legal record extraction
- Local language analysis
- Cross-border data stitching
EDD does not just confirm data. It provides a narrative of risk.
12-Month Monitoring
Fraud is frequently timed to occur after onboarding. Cedar Rose’s monitoring alerts clients to:
- Ownership changes
- New sanctions hits
- Adverse media escalation
- Changes in activity or registration
- Deteriorating financial indicators
Fraudsters exploit static checks. Monitoring closes that window.
How Cedar Rose Helps Organisations Prevent Fraud
Example 1: Eliminating High-Risk Suppliers Before They Enter the Supply Chain
When a multinational corporation needed to onboard more than 300 suppliers across the Middle East and Africa, Cedar Rose stepped in to provide deep visibility into markets where public data is often incomplete or unavailable.
Through a combination of corporate verification, activity checks, and UBO intelligence, Cedar Rose identified critical red flags that would never have appeared in basic registry extracts. The analysis uncovered inactive companies, dissolved entities, beneficial owners linked to sanctions, severe credit deterioration, and suppliers previously named in procurement-related fraud.
Because these insights were available prior to onboarding, the organisation removed every high-risk supplier from the process. The result was a clean, trustworthy supplier base built without a single fraudulent invoice being paid.
Example 2: Blocking Synthetic Businesses During Marketplace Onboarding
A regional digital marketplace relied on rapid SME onboarding, which made it an attractive target for synthetic businesses created solely for fraudulent transactions. Cedar Rose’s KYB API transformed their onboarding process by introducing automated, multi-layered verification.
The system flagged entities with duplicated director information and newly formed companies with incomplete corporate activity history, and clusters of interconnected companies sharing identical ownership trails.
Armed with real intelligence rather than surface-level checks, the marketplace was able to block an entire fraud network before the first transaction occurred, shifting from reactive investigations to preventive risk control.
Example 3: Revealing Hidden Ownership in High-Value Contract Negotiations
When a professional services firm prepared to enter a multi-year agreement with a regional distributor, Cedar Rose conducted an enhanced due diligence review tailored for high-value B2B contracts.
The investigation exposed a hidden beneficial owner whose companies had previously collapsed into insolvency, a sister company dissolved following legal disputes, directors named in negative media involving procurement misconduct, and a politically exposed shareholder operating in a high-risk jurisdiction.
These findings fundamentally changed the client’s risk assessment, allowing them to pause the deal before signing and avoid a potentially damaging financial and reputational partnership.
Example 4: Using Continuous Monitoring to Prevent Credit Losses
A credit insurer offering terms to SMEs across GCC used Cedar Rose’s financial and corporate monitoring services to manage exposure in a volatile market.
Throughout the monitoring period, Cedar Rose detected a series of escalating risk signals: a director’s sudden resignation, a sharp decline in liquidity indicators, negative media coverage suggesting regulatory investigations,s.
With this visibility, the insurer adjusted coverage before default occurred. Competitors relying on outdated or incomplete data did not respond in time and suffered significant losses.
The Strategic Shift: From Defence to Anticipation
Reliable business data changes the fundamental nature of fraud prevention. Instead of reacting to alerts after damage is done, organisations gain the clarity to act before exposure ever occurs.
This shift:
- Strengthens compliance
- Speeds onboarding
- Protects financial integrity
- Reduces operational costs
- Builds trust across supply chains
- Improves cross-border decision making
The statistics show how urgently this shift is needed. With nearly 80 percent of organisations targeted annually, relying on assumptions is no longer viable. Fraud thrives in the shadows. Cedar Rose’s data brings light.
Final Reflection
Fraud does not begin with a transaction. It begins with a lack of visibility. Outdated records, missing ownership data, and incomplete due diligence create the conditions where fraud can flourish.
Reliable business data, corporate verification, UBO identification, sanctions screening, credit insight, enhanced investigation, and active monitoring, provides the clarity organisations need to prevent fraud before it starts. Cedar Rose’s deep regional expertise, particularly across the Middle East and Africa, transforms fragmented data into actionable intelligence.
Fraud cannot survive where visibility is strong. Cedar Rose ensures organisations see clearly long before they commit to any partner, supplier or corporate customer.
Sources:
- Experian – B2B Fraud Detection
Experian, n.d.
https://www.experian.co.uk/business/campaigns/b2b-fraud-detection - NACM / BrightQuery – The Evolving Threat of Fraud in B2B Trade
NACM, 2024.
https://bcm.nacm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BrightQuery-Whitepaper-Apr24-final.pdf - Serrala – How to Prevent Fraud in B2B Payments
Serrala, n.d.
https://www.serrala.com/ebook/how-prevent-fraud-b2b-payments - Bottomline – What is B2B Payment Fraud and How Can You Prevent It?
Bottomline Technologies, n.d.
https://www.bottomline.com/learning-center/what-b2b-payment-fraud-and-how-can-you-prevent-it - Ravelin – Why Are Fraudsters Targeting B2B Companies?
Ravelin, n.d.
https://www.ravelin.com/blog/why-are-fraudsters-targeting-b2b-companies - PairSoft – The Accounts Payable Fraud Prevention Playbook
PairSoft, n.d.
https://www.pairsoft.com/whitepapers/the-accounts-payable-fraud-prevention-playbook.pdf - TrustDecision – Effective Fraud Analysis Strategies for B2B Businesses
TrustDecision, n.d.
https://trustdecision.com/articles/effective-fraud-analysis-strategies-for-b2b-businesses