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Proactively address fraud risks
Fraud is one of the most substantial threats to the viability and sustainability of any organisation. Damage caused by fraud can go far beyond purely financial losses or regulatory enforcement. It can result in significant adverse business impact undermining relationships, reputation and brands that are essential for the organisation’s continuous growth and success.
At PwC, we provide comprehensive and practical advisory support across various aspects of fraud risk management, from overall fraud risk diagnostics to the designing and implementation of robust fraud prevention frameworks and practices focused on facilitating timely identification and proper response to ever-changing threats and challenges driven by fraud-related risks..
Services and solutions
Fraud Risk Assessment
A thorough fraud risk assessment that accurately identifies the organisation-specific fraud risks is one of the key mainstays for building an effective fraud risk management capacity and resilience to the risks of fraud. Such an assessment is not a one-off exercise, but rather one that maximises its value for the organisation when performed on a systematic and recurring basis.
How we can help
A fraud risk assessment is a dynamic and iterative process for identifying and assessing fraud risks relevant to the organisation. Risk assessments should combine both a quantitative and qualitative approach, in the dimensions of customer type, products/services, geography and transactions. Assumptions and weightings used in any quantitative approach should be carefully explained and justified, and conclusions should be supported with data.
The model should take into consideration business rules, compliance monitoring and testing and other risk monitoring processes. In addition, the methodology should be integrated with the enterprise assessments performed. Periodic controls assessments through enterprise-wide compliance testing, audits, and examinations should also be considered.
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Audit Fraud Support
The need for companies’ financial statements to be audited by an independent external auditor has been a cornerstone of confidence in the world’s financial systems. The benefit of an audit is that it provides assurance that management has presented a ‘true and fair’ view of a company’s financial performance and position.
An audit underpins the trust and obligation of stewardship between those who manage a company and those who own it or otherwise have a need for a ‘true and fair’ view, the stakeholders. Given the importance of its role, queries are often raised about the audit, the auditors and the stakeholders they serve.
Therefore, it is of high importance that auditors conduct engagement with a mindset that recognises the possibility that a material misstatement due to fraud could be present under relevant local or international standards (e.g. ISA 240, SAS99).
How we can help
We support audit teams in their audit planning activities in reviewing fraud related testing and strategy to be undertaken during the audit.
Your benefits
As a part of fraud risk assessment we support organisations with:
Inherent risk prioritisation
Identification and prioritisation of the areas and activities most prone to fraud based on their industry specifics, size, history of past fraud cases and other related matters.
Inherent risk identification
Identification of inherent fraud risks faced by the organisations and assessment of their likelihood and magnitude of potential impact.
Fraud mapping
Mapping existing internal controls to the relevant fraud risks and evaluation of whether they are operating effectively and efficiently.
Fraud controls
Identification and evaluation of residual fraud risks resulting from poorly efficient or non-existent controls.
Residual risk prioritisation
Prioritisation of the residual fraud risks based on their potential likelihood and scale of prospective impact.
Residual risk recommendations
Development of practical tailored recommendations in response to the identified residual fraud risks.
“We help organisations take preventative steps to limit its exposure to fraud, and establish a process to manage such a crisis, should one occur.”
In a nutshell
So, even when companies have controls in place to detect economic crime, these can often be rendered ineffective by management override or collusion. Needless to say, it is much more cost effective to proactively address fraud risks rather than to suffer from preventable fraud and waste valuable resources to detect, investigate and remediate adverse consequences afterwards. Our proactive measures include:
- Conducting fraud risk assessments
- Designing and implementing employee awareness testing
- Reviewing your code of ethics and whistleblower programme in relation to best practices
- Assisting you with your fraud awareness training
- Reviewing your incident reporting mechanism for effectiveness
- Reviewing your investigation and remediation protocols in relation to best practices
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Senior Manager, Forensic Services, PwC Switzerland
Tel: +41 58 792 97 30