New tools are now available to help management accountants contend with the perennial, and pressing, challenge of appropriately managing fraud risk. The tools are available free of charge from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) and accessible to all IMA members at http://www.acfe.com/fraudrisktools.aspx.

The tools complement the Fraud Risk Management Guide, developed by ACFE and the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), an organization cosponsored by IMA. The Guide offers a detailed blueprint for helping organizations establish an overall fraud risk management program and offers best practices to help implement COSO Principle 8, which specifically addresses the importance of organizations considering “the potential for fraud in assessing risks to the achievement of objectives.”

The new Fraud Risk Management (FRM) tools include:

• Interactive Scorecards
  Use interactive scorecards to assess the components of an organization's existing fraud risk management program. Based on the five fraud risk management principles found in the Fraud Risk Management Guide, the scorecards support an organization’s periodic self-assessment.
• Library of Anti-Fraud Data Analytics Tests
  Explore an interactive tool that details, by fraud risk type, how to integrate data analytics tests into a fraud risk assessment or investigative work plans. The library of test examples illustrates a variety of tests to consider and organizes them by categories of occupational fraud risks.
• Risk Assessment and Follow-Up Action Templates
  Using the fraud risk assessment matrix in the Fraud Risk Management Guide as a foundation, this spreadsheet provides a risk assessment matrix to document any organization's fraud risks and controls. The template automatically creates a heat map showing the significance and likelihood of each identified fraud exposure, a fraud risk ranking page displaying each fraud risk exposure from most to least severe, and a control-activities matrix showing the identification and evaluation of existing control activities related to each fraud risk exposure.
• Points of Focus Documentation Templates
  Use the templates to help create consistent and uniform documentation related to fraud risk governance, fraud risk assessment, fraud control activities, fraud investigation and follow up, and fraud risk management monitoring.

IMA members can download a free copy of the 13-page Fraud Risk Management Executive Summary from the IMA website.