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Dave Aylward recently joined the University as the Senior Counter Fraud Lead and Financial Manager and has already earned the nickname of the ‘Fraud Guy’! As part of the Financial Assurance and Counter Fraud team in the central Finance Division Dave looks at the University’s economic crime risk response. We had a quick chat with Dave to better understand his role and how we can help.

Dave Aylward

Your job sounds like the basis of a financial crime thriller, could you tell us more about your role?

Haha! My remit covers many aspects of our economic crime risk response and in particular the fact that as an entity as a whole, the University significantly under-reported both the instances of and the losses from, fraud and other economic crimes in our business-as-usual activities. My role is to see if we can, collectively, alter those statistics and present a more realistic picture of risk within this establishment.

What does the ‘Fraud Guy’ do for fun?

Away from work I play a fairly decent game of badminton a couple of times a week and enjoy long walks on the Surrey Downs near where I live. When I’m not feeling quite so virtuous and healthy I enjoy visiting local pubs and restaurants and trying out new recipes from some of my favourite chefs at home (along with their companion wines!).

Getting back to your exciting job, what is at the top of your to-do list?

Before we can start to fully assess the risks we all face, and therefore start working on practical, appropriate and proportionate solutions, we need to begin the conversation on fraud. I’ve set up a working group of risk owners and people who have an interest in the discussing financial crime risks within their areas of expertise (we’re the Fraud Risk Owners Group, or FROGs for short!), and one of the first things we’ll be looking at is organising and delivering fraud training for everyone.

And what are you hoping your FROGs will achieve?

Ultimately, I envisage that this group (akin to the POGS and PUGS that have been established to look at process risks and issues), will become the ground-level “fraud champions” for their teams and will be central to helping deliver bespoke and targeted advice and guidance to their colleagues.

Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful collaboration to us! If you would like to join the ‘Fraud Guy’ and become a FROG, or just want to discuss financial crime risk and help your colleagues, contact Dave at counterfraud@admin.ox.ac.uk.