Fraud Risk Assessment: A Tool for SME’s to Identify Effective Internal Controls

Abstract

In recent years, the importance of good control mechanisms has increased significantly due to the number of high-profile corporate failures caused by top management fraudulent acts. Sarbanes Oxley Act 2002, Section 404 says that it is the management’s responsibility to maintain and assess the effectiveness of its own internal control structure for financial reporting. The Act also states that it is the auditor’s responsibility to attest and report on the management’s assessment and the state of the overall financial control. Previous research that had been carried out was from the perspective catered mainly for the auditors or audit committees that had been set up by the management of the organization.  Not many organizations, especially Small and Medium Sized Organizations are able to afford the cost of hiring consultants, auditors (external and internal) or set up audit committees to assess and manage the Internal Controls. Therefore, this paper expects to provide guidance to smaller sized organizations that prefer to set up and maintain effective and efficient Internal Controls in-house; on how to carry out a Fraud Risk Assessment and recommend Internal Controls based on the results, whilst trying to ensure costs, personnel and operations turnover are not affected in an unreasonable manner.

Keywords: Fraud Risk Assessment, Internal Controls, Fraud Schemes, Fraud, Small & Medium Sized, Community Manager