Fashion retailer New Look cut in-store fraud by £4m last year after upgrading its anti-theft and detection technology.

The high street firm, which operates 770 stores in the UK, Ireland and Belgium, has reduced fraud losses by 22 per cent since introducing new data mining, case management and CCTV systems.

Data mining software from retail IT specialist IntelliQ links to point of sale systems in stores and sends data back to New Look’s head office in near real-time. This allows loss prevention officers to spot more quickly phoney refunds, discounts and credit card scams being carried out by staff or thieves targeting stores.

New Look is also using case management software from Oris Group to better manage collecting evidence and bringing prosecutions to trial.

‘We are starting to use the data in other departments,’ Stuart Green, head of loss prevention and audit at New Look, told last week’s Retail Fraud conference in London.

‘We are looking at the discounts we’ve had to give for faulty products and we can use it to go back to the designer and tell them that they are costing us money.’

Lloyds Pharmacy has managed to prevent £160,000 in fraud losses in three months using similar systems.

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