Year-End Wires, Executive Imposters, Real Losses: How Conduit Helps Accounting Fight BEC

Year-end is when wire fraud risk spikes: transaction volumes jump, exception processing increases, and BEC crews know accounting teams are racing the clock. For teams moving large dollar wires, the combination of compressed deadlines and increasingly credible impersonation attacks is exactly what makes November to January a high-loss window.

Across businesses, payment activity can increase significantly in the final quarter, and many firms report that December alone sees some of their largest single payments - bonuses, vendor true-ups, distributions, and deal closings. That creates a perfect backdrop for BEC and vendor impersonation: a well-timed “we’ve updated our bank details” email or executive-style request can blend into the noise, especially when teams are clearing backlogs before holidays. Industry data shows that wires remain one of the most targeted payment methods for fraud, with median loss per successful incident significantly higher than card or ACH fraud and recovery rates still low.

BEC has also become more convincing. Attackers now mirror internal tone and signatures, reply within existing threads, and coordinate across multiple personas (e.g. “CFO” plus “external counsel”) to push through last‑minute changes on high-value wires. These schemes are deliberately aimed at accounting and treasury users with access to vendor master data and payment release. The pattern is consistent: late in the month or quarter, close to cutoff, involving a large wire and a requested update to banking details.

A lean, end-of-year playbook for accounting and treasury teams should be built around BEC-resistant verification and tooling that enforces it. This is where Conduit Security is signed to help: Conduit sits between your accounting stack and the bank to verify counterparties, detect anomalous account changes, and provide an auditable, policy-driven approval process for wires. Instead of hoping busy teams remember playbooks under pressure, Conduit operationalizes them, flagging BEC-style changes, enforcing step-up checks for year-end payments, and CFOs and Controllers a defensible story when auditors and boards ask how wire fraud risk was managed in the most active part of the year.

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