The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, in collaboration with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, have introduced the COSO Fraud Risk Management Certificate program.
The new certification, offered through the Institute of Internal Auditors and the Institute of Management Accountants in addition to the ACFE, aims to help professionals enhance their expertise in fraud risk management. COSO is jointly sponsored by the IIA and the IMA, along with the American Accounting Association, the American Institute of CPAs and Financial Executives International.
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The certificate program builds on the Fraud Risk Management Guide that COSO first introduced in 2016 and expanded in 2023, to provide a more comprehensive approach to identifying, assessing and mitigating fraud risks. The second edition of the guide outlines five key principles organizations should follow to establish an effective fraud risk management program.
The COSO Fraud Risk Management Certificate gives participants the necessary skills to implement a robust fraud risk management framework based on COSO principles. The program includes self-paced learning modules and a certifying exam. Upon successful completion, participants will earn an official COSO Fraud Risk Guide Certificate and Digital Badge, demonstrating their proficiency in fraud deterrence and management.
“Managing fraud risk is a challenge for organizations of all sizes,” said COSO executive director and chair Lucia Wind in a statement Wednesday. “This program provides professionals with the knowledge and tools needed to build strong anti-fraud controls, risk assessments and programs, ultimately strengthening organizational resilience and fostering a culture of integrity.”
The certification program includes practical strategies for implementing COSO’s fraud risk management framework; best practices for fraud deterrence, detection and response; integration of fraud risk management with internal controls and data analytics; plus case studies and real-world applications.
“In continuing our partnership with COSO our organizations form a united front against fraud,” said ACFE president John Gill in a statement. “The ACFE is pleased to join forces once again to develop this new certificate that will assist professionals in navigating fraud risks, as well as continue guiding organizations in establishing a comprehensive and effective fraud risk management program.”
Separately, the ACFE recently released the In-House Fraud Investigation Teams: 2025 Benchmarking Report, discussing the groups that help prevent and detect fraud at organizations. The report examines common trends in caseloads, credentials, recovery of fraud losses and more.
Accounting firms are among the groups with fraud experts who assist clients.
“I have several fraud projects going on right now,” Brian Lafountain, a partner at The Bonadio Group, a Top 50 Firm based in Rochester, New York, told Accounting Today. “The thing that I’m running into in most of my jobs is a lack of adequate policies and procedures being in place. The key thing is the controls that are built into the policies and procedures, which are approvals, authorizations, reconciliations. As you’re going through the procedures or whatever your daily operational responsibilities are, there’s things that need to be built in to identify or to raise a flag when something is off or something doesn’t reconcile, or a prompt that you can’t go further in the process until you get somebody’s approval.”
He has recently been working on a project for a local municipality in which an employee has allegedly misappropriated funds.
‘”I believe she purposely keeps no documentation, so that makes it very difficult for us when we come back and try to recreate events, to try to confirm that money is missing because there’s no source documentation,” he said. “She takes tax payments from local vendors or local residents, or she issues building permits and things of that nature. … They come in and they pay that, and she doesn’t ever give them a receipt.”
The lack of receipts or a cash log can make it difficult to accumulate the evidence.
“We see a lot of that, honestly, a lack of documentation, a lack of documented policies and procedures, things of that nature, and a lack of internal control that severely increases the risk of something nefarious happening,” said Lafountain. “If you don’t have controls in place to monitor these things, then it can perpetuate itself and keep going on through months and months at a time before it’s ever caught. The vast majority of the frauds that we catch, we catch via a whistleblower of some sort. It’s a tip that comes in, whether it’s an email tip or a phone call.”
The Bonadio Group offers a toll-free fraud and abuse hotline that it sells to its clients.
“The messages come directly to my group here at Bonadio, and we have a staff of Certified Fraud Examiners who answer that phone and document the allegations,” said Lafountain. “It’s all anonymous, so the organization is not involved. We prepare a report of what the allegations are, and then we send it back to the organization so that they can follow up on it.”
He noted that in the latest ACFE occupational fraud report, the 2024 Report to the Nations, 43% of frauds are identified through tips. “It’s important to make sure that you have some kind of mechanism set up where employees or vendors can report any suspicious activity or any allegations,” said Lafountain.
