Fraudulent bank account change requests: a growing threat to healthcare finance leaders
Fraudulent bank account change requests: a growing threat to healthcare finance leaders
By Phil Binkow | Published: 2025-10-27 13:14:00 | Source: MedCity News
It’s Monday morning at a busy health care provider. The Accounts Payable (AP) team is deep into incoming invoices from medical supply suppliers, payroll approvals, and urgent requests from department heads. Amid the torrent of emails, one message stands out: A trusted supplier is updating their bank account details and needs to make the change before the next payment. The order looks completely legitimate – the supplier’s logo is there, the email address looks correct, and the message indicates an ongoing request for lab equipment. Due to time constraints, the AP specialist enters the details of the new bank account and moves on.
Two weeks later, the supplier called to ask why the payments had stopped. Only then does the team realize they have sent thousands of non-refundable dollars to a scammer. What seemed like a “simple task” turned into a crisis that could have been avoided with stronger verification practices for bank account change requests.
Why are fake bank account change requests so difficult to detect?
At first glance, bank account change requests don’t seem like a big risk – after all, suppliers update their data all the time. But scammers have learned that AP departments, especially in healthcare, are often overwhelmed, with limited bandwidth to double-check for updates. This makes bank account change requests a major attack vector. It’s routine enough to avoid raising suspicion, but if successful, the money can be redirected directly to the criminal’s account.
Scammers are more sophisticated than ever. Their requests:
- Imitating real communication. Attackers use fake email addresses or compromise legitimate email addresses, making messages nearly indistinguishable from actual supplier correspondence. These fraudulent emails often contain the correct logos, formatting, and even writing style, which can fool even experienced AP employees. As cybercriminals improve their methods, traditional methods for detecting typos or unusual wording are no longer reliable.
- Exploiting urgency and confidence. Requests often come with a tight deadline or refer to senior executives, prompting AP teams to act quickly without scrutiny. Fraudsters know that healthcare organizations prioritize patient care and supplier relationships, so they apply pressure to make the request appear legitimate. This tactic plays on human behavior, creating an environment in which AP and finance staff feel they cannot delay or question change.
- Take advantage of complexity. With thousands of sellers, employees have difficulty knowing every contact, making fraudulent orders easier to sneak in. Scammers exploit this complexity by targeting less engaged suppliers, assuming that employees won’t realize the difference. The larger and more decentralized the organization, the greater the risk of a fake request being overlooked.
- Bypass traditional checks. Simple callbacks are not enough when scammers spoof phone numbers or impersonate known contacts. In some cases, they can even gain access to legitimate email accounts, which means a callback to a “usual” contact still ends up in the hands of the scammer. This creates a false sense of security, leaving AP teams vulnerable to fraud risks.
Best practices that make a difference
The good news is that healthcare organizations don’t have to remain vulnerable. By adopting stronger, more consistent best practices, AP and finance leaders can make it harder for fraudsters to succeed. These aren’t just “nice to have” guarantees — they’re key defenses in a world where cybercriminals are actively targeting healthcare providers due to their high transaction volume.
Here are best practices that can help protect your organization from bogus account change requests:
- Always check outside the request channel. Never trust emails or forms alone. Verify changes through a separate, reliable communication method. If a request comes in via email, use the phone and call a known, verified contact number, not the number listed on the request. This step may seem small but it is often the difference between stopping fraud and losing money.
- Use multi-level approvals. A second set of monitoring is required for all bank account changes, especially for large or sensitive suppliers. Second reviewers often pick up details that the first person overlooked, especially when pressure or insistence is applied. This additional control creates accountability and reduces the chance of a single mistake resulting in major losses.
- Maintain central supplier records. Keep current and verified contact details in a secure system so employees always know the right person to contact. A centralized database reduces reliance on memory, sticky notes, or outdated spreadsheets, which are major sources of error. By keeping supplier data up to date, you make it extremely difficult for fraudulent details to sneak through.
- Educate AP and finance staff. Regular training ensures that employees recognize red flags and resist rushing tactics. Training should include real-life examples of fraudulent requests to help employees develop their instincts to spot suspicious behavior. Empowered employees are more likely to question unusual requests and escalate them for appropriate review.
- Adopting automated bank account verification tools. Technology can remove human error from the equation and expand protection as an organization’s supplier base grows. Automated tools check requests in real-time against trusted data sources, providing a layer of defense that manual processes cannot consistently match. This gives financial leaders confidence that each order has been thoroughly verified before payments are changed.
How automation helps stop fraud at the source
While best practices build a strong foundation, automated bank account verification is what takes fraud prevention from reactive to proactive. Financial care and financial departments manage hundreds or even thousands of transactions weekly, and it is not realistic to expect human staff to manually verify every bank account change request with the same accuracy. Automation adds speed, scale, and consistency to the process, ensuring that no fraudulent order slips through the cracks.
Automated bank account verification provides stronger, faster and more reliable protection by:
- Verify ownership instantly. Automation checks bank account details and compares them against trusted data sources to confirm that the supplier actually owns the account. This eliminates guesswork and eliminates reliance on supplier-provided documents that can easily be forged. The result is instant clarity about whether a change request is safe or fraudulent.
- Reduce AP workload and funding. Automation eliminates the need for manual callbacks or back-and-forth communications. Instead, AP staff can focus on higher-value tasks such as analysis and reporting. The time savings alone can make automated bank account verification pay for itself in a matter of weeks.
- Ensure consistency. Automated bank account verification applies the same criteria to every request, without relying on individual judgment or memory. Manual bank account verification leaves a lot of room for human error, especially when employees are busy or under stress. Automation enforces standardization, ensuring that no shortcuts or errors occur.
- Create an audit trail. Automation provides documentation proving that verification has occurred, which is essential for compliance and audits in highly regulated healthcare environments. This record is invaluable when demonstrating due diligence to regulators or auditors. It also helps protect your organization’s reputation by demonstrating a strong commitment to security.
A safer scenario with best practices in place
Compare the “day in the life” to a day when best practices and automation were standard operating procedures. A bogus request arrives, but this time the system automatically flags the request for verification, verifies ownership, and the fraudster’s attempt fails. The AP team is alerted, funds remain safe, and the organization avoids a costly mistake. Instead of responding to fraud after the fact, this healthcare provider stays ahead of the curve—protecting its suppliers, protecting its finances, and enhancing the AP’s role.
Final thought
Fraudulent bank account change requests aren’t just another check box on your fraud prevention list — they’re one of the most urgent and dangerous threats facing healthcare AP teams today. One misstep can have serious financial and reputational consequences. By combining employee vigilance with automated verification of bank account ownership, financial leaders can turn AP from a weak target into a strong first line of defense, keeping the organization focused on patient care.
Photo: Kentoh, Getty Images
Phil Pinko He is the CEO of Financial Operations Networks (FON) and developer of VendorInfo. Billing information and the Vendor Information Management Center of Excellence, a leading suite of SaaS platforms that allow finance teams to onboard, verify and manage vendors with confidence, reducing cost and risk and enhancing compliance.
Prior to founding Financial Operations Networks, Phil founded and served as CEO of PayTECH, a leading online invoice processing, payments, and spend analytics platform serving companies such as Oracle, Cisco, the Gap, Charles Schwab, JP Morgan Chase, and NCR. Under Phil PayTECH, the company has grown to process and pay more than 100 million invoices annually. In 2002, FON founded the Accounts Payable Network (TAPN), which has grown to become the largest accounts payable training and certification organization in the world.
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