Fraud Risk Assessment Checklist

Fraud risk assessments often stop at general statements. This checklist helps auditors identify specific fraud scenarios, the opportunities that make them possible, management override, and whether the organization is ready to respond.

Use it during engagement planning, when reviewing management's fraud risk assessment, or after incidents and near misses. Fraud scenarios checks confirm that schemes are identified by process and asset, management override is explicitly considered, third-party and collusion risks are covered, digital and payment fraud scenarios reflect current systems, and prior incidents and whistleblowing reports are incorporated. Drivers and controls checks cover pressure and incentive factors, opportunities created by weak segregation or access, high-judgment estimates and manual journals, mapping of preventive and detective controls to each major scenario, and whether control owners understand their fraud-specific responsibilities. Monitoring and response checks cover red-flag analytics for high-risk schemes, protected whistleblowing channels, investigation roles and escalation, evidence preservation and turning lessons from incidents into control improvements.

Work through each point with the Done, Review or N/A status, and use the risk prompts to find where one person can initiate, change and approve the same outcome. Scenarios marked for review become candidates for analytics or targeted testing, and the completion page records your overall conclusion.