A career as a forensic accountant can be rewarding in more ways than one. To start, this career path allows you to take on the role of a “financial detective” as you hunt through documents and statements in search of crimes. Additionally, with an average annual salary of $83,462, pursuing a career as a forensic accountant can also be rewarding for your wallet.
According to Experian’s 2023 US Identity and Fraud Report, financial crime caused consumers to lose $8.8 billion in 2022, up 30% annually. Today’s experts rely on sophisticated strategies like fraud analytics to fight this growing issue.
If you’re interested in pursuing this career path, it’s advisable to obtain an advanced degree that addresses fraud analytics, such as Murray State University’s online Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a concentration in Forensic Accounting program. Gaining this background knowledge in fraud analytics before entering the workforce can help set you up for a successful career.
What Is Forensic Accounting?
Forensic accounting is the process of examining an individual’s or business’s finances in search of financial crimes. Forensic accountants are also responsible for collecting, documenting and reporting their findings through reports or presentations. A forensic accountant can investigate various financial crimes, depending on their industry. Three potential examples are:
- Embezzlement: assessing the fraudulent appropriation of funds or assets by an individual entrusted with them
- Money laundering: investigating the origins of money to determine if it comes from illegal sources
- Insurance claims: examining insurance claims to ensure that all documentation is accurate
Forensic accountants can also work in the private sector, helping companies protect their customers from fraud. In today’s digital world, fraudsters can exploit innocent consumers in many ways, including identity theft, phishing for customer data or stealing credit card and bank information. To fight back against these types of fraud, today’s professionals rely heavily on fraud analytics.
Protecting Today’s Consumers With Fraud Analytics
Fraud analytics involves using data analysis tools to catch financial crimes. These tools include machine learning, data mining and predictive artificial intelligence. By leveraging the computing power of these tools, forensic accountants can analyze datasets that would be far too big for anyone to search through manually as they hunt for fraudulent behavior.
Analytics Tools and Techniques for Fraud Prevention
The battle between financial criminals and forensic accountants is similar to the battle between disease and medicine. Diseases constantly evolve and render medicine ineffective, so there is a constant need to develop new, stronger medicine. In turn, this typically sparks another evolution, and the cycle continues.
The same is true for financial crimes. As technology grows more potent, new types of crime or fraud schemes emerge, creating the need for more sophisticated fraud prevention techniques. Deloitte highlights two common fraud prevention techniques:
- Analytics repository: This technique integrates data into one location so that analytical models can identify different signals across an entire company.
- Supervised modeling: This technique involves developing algorithms to identify patterns in instances of fraud in the past and flag them in the future.
The general goal of these techniques is to search for trends in the movement of money that could be associated with potential fraud. If a company can identify fraudulent activity from the past or in real time, it can adjust its systems to prevent future incidents. To achieve this, forensic accountants often rely on text and computer vision analytics to monitor data sources like emails, messages, audio or video.
As a forensic accounting specialist, you could leverage your expertise to fight cybercrime in the public or private sector, counterterrorism, public corruption, fraud or even counterintelligence. Forensic accounting is truly a multifaceted career path that offers a lot of flexibility in terms of the work you’ll do.
A Career in Forensic Accounting
As the world becomes more digital, regulators and consumers will demand tighter restrictions on fraud mitigation from the companies that they work with. As a result, talented forensic accountants will be in high demand, especially those who are savvy in fraud analytics. For an aspiring forensic accountant, the best way to differentiate yourself is to obtain an advanced business degree with fraud analytics coursework.
For example, Murray State University’s online MBA in Forensic Accounting program offers a course in Fraud Analytics that helps students gain a deep understanding of the latest fraud investigation technology. This program also helps students prepare to take the CPA exam, another pillar of a successful career as an accountant.
Students will explore the practicality, efficiency and effectiveness of data analytics in detecting fraud. Murray State’s program is perfect for those seeking careers as forensic accountants, financial fraud analysts, senior forensic auditors, financial investigators/agents or forensic advisory managers.
Learn more about Murray State University’s online Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Forensic Accounting program.
