BUSN20016 Research Proposal: Forensic Accounting for Fraud Detection

This research proposal investigates forensic accounting as a crucial tool for fraud detection within the financial industry. The study begins by highlighting the escalating implications of financial crime and the substantial losses incurred by businesses annually. It then introduces forensic accounting, explaining its use of auditing and accounting skills to examine financial records and detect fraud. The research aims to discuss forensic accounting's role in fraud detection, identifying current fraud situations, defining forensic accounting, and outlining its application. The methodology employs a qualitative approach with a literature review to gather and analyze secondary data from various sources such as articles, books, and journals. Data presentation will primarily involve textual analysis, along with the use of charts and tables to illustrate fraud-related data. The content analysis method will be employed to analyze the gathered data and identify patterns. The research concludes by emphasizing the importance of forensic accounting in combating financial crime and providing a comprehensive understanding of its methods and applications.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Forensic Accounting as a tool for Fraud Detection
3-31-2020

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 1
Table of Contents
Problem Statement.....................................................................................................................2
Research aim and Objective...................................................................................................2
Brief Methodology.................................................................................................................3
Secondary data sources, data presentation, and data analysis............................................3
References..................................................................................................................................5

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 2
Problem Statement
In the present digital age, the implications of financial crime against different
financial institutions, banks, and services are increasing at a fast rate. Preventing fraud now
shows the largest concern areas for the industry of financial services and is possibly to be the
biggest IT expenditure driver in the future. Generally, businesses lose around 5% of their
revenue due to fraud on a yearly basis, with financial and banking services, manufacturing
and government industries most usually victimized. In all the possible global fraud losses
associated with occupational fraud are more than $3.5 trillion (Capgemini, 2017). In order to
resolve this issue and identify the fraud in finance, there is the use of forensic accounting as
the tool.
Forensic accounting makes use of auditing, accounting, and examine skills for
inspecting the finances of a business or an individual. Forensic accounting offers an analysis
of the accounting that is appropriate to be adopted in the legal records. Forensic accountants
are provided with the training for looking beyond the deal and numbers with the reality of the
business of a situation. Forensic accounting is most of the time adopted in the fraud and
misuse cases for exampling the financial crime nature in the court (Singleton, 2010).
Forensic accountants evaluate, understand and abridge complex business and financial cases.
They are hired by the banks, government agencies, insurance companies, public accounting
firms, and police forces. Forensic accountants accumulate the financial evidence, create
computer applications for managing the information gathered and communicate their results
in the presentation or report format (Modugu & Anyaduba, 2013).
Research aim and Objective
This research aims to discuss forensic accounting as a tool for fraud detection. In order to
meet this aim, here are some of the objectives.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 3
 To identify the current situation of fraud in the financial industry.
 To identify the concept of Forensic Accounting.
 To identify how forensic accounting is a tool to detect fraud in the financial industry.
Brief Methodology
In order to conduct this research, the use of the qualitative research method will be
used as it will allow the researcher to evaluate and understand different theories for
presenting the non-numerical data. This helps in identifying the results and presenting them
in a research paper. Besides this, the researcher will make use of the literature review as the
research strategy in order to get the route or direction to present the paper. A literature review
is one of the most effective ways of gathering secondary data from different sources that
helps also in evaluating the validity and proof of the gathered data (Ridley, 2012). A
literature review is also called reviewing scholarly articles in order to identify the information
for the research topic and results (Bassan, Peter, Houbre, Brennstuhl, Costantini, Speyer &
Tarquinio, 2014).
Secondary data sources, data presentation, and data analysis
For presenting this paper, the use of a secondary method of data collection will be
used. A secondary method of data collection is all about reviewing different articles and
scholarly papers for gathering the data and presenting it in the research paper (Johnston,
2017). In order to gather the secondary data, the sources that will be used are websites,
articles, books, journals, etc. related to the research topic that is ‘Forensic accounting a tool
of Fraud Detection’.
The data presentation is all about organizing the data into different charts, graphs, and
tables such that statistical and logical conclusions can be made from the gathered
measurements. In the case of the textual data, the collected data is presented in different
paragraphs that present the validity and reliability of the same (Hoffmann, 2017). For this

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 4
research, the use of textual data will be majorly done in which data can be presented in the
paragraph form. Besides this, the use of tables and charts can also be done in order to
represent the data related to fraud in the finance industry.
In addition to this, the method of data analysis that will be used for this research is
content analysis as it is one of the most used methods that help in analyzing the gathered data
and identifying a pattern in it.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 5
References
Bassan, F., Peter, F., Houbre, B., Brennstuhl, M. J., Costantini, M., Speyer, E., & Tarquinio,
C. (2014). Adherence to oral antineoplastic agents by cancer patients: definition and
literature review. European journal of cancer care, 23(1), 22-35.
Capgemini. (2017). Fraud Solution for Financial Services. Retrieved from
https://www.capgemini.com/in-en/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/07/
fraud_management_in_banking_brochure.pdf
Hoffmann, P.J. (2017). Principles of Data Management and Presentation 1st ed. U.S: Univ of
California Press.
Johnston, M. P. (2017). Secondary data analysis: A method of which the time has come.
Qualitative and quantitative methods in libraries, 3(3), 619-626.
Modugu, K. P., & Anyaduba, J. O. (2013). Forensic accounting and financial fraud in
Nigeria: An empirical approach. International Journal of Business and Social
Science, 4(7), 281-289.
Ridley, D. (2012). The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students 2nd ed. U.K:
SAGE.
Singleton, W.T. (2010). Fraud Auditing and Forensic Accounting 4th ed. U.K: John Wiley &
Sons.