Fraud takes a lower public profile these days, but a new a Deloitte Forensic survey says corporate fraud is on the rise.

The Australian Institute of Criminology has estimated that fraud in Australia costs almost $6 billion a year. The Deloitte survey says 82% of the 125 professional investigators and risk managers it surveyed said they had experienced an increase in corporate fraud in the past year, with 36% saying there had been a substantial increase.

The three most common types of workplace crime were intellectual property theft, theft of common property and employee expense fraud.

Deloitte Forensic says businesses without prevention strategies are at serious risk of revenue leakage and reputation damage.

Survey respondents said reputation damage is the most costly result of corporate fraud, followed by revenue leakage.

Despite the increase in fraud activity, 74% of the respondents believe that less than a quarter of fraudulent acts are detected. Alarmingly, 41% of respondents believed that less than 10% of fraudulent acts are detected.