The Financial Crime Audit Toolkit

A Two-Volume Practitioner Series for Auditing Financial Crime Risk, Controls and Effectiveness

Financial crime internal audit is changing.

Regulators, boards and audit committees increasingly expect Internal Audit to go beyond confirming that policies exist, procedures have been followed and controls have been documented. The real question is harder: Does the financial crime framework actually work?

Financial Crime Internal Audit: Handbook & Toolkit is a practical two-volume series designed for Internal Audit, financial crime, compliance and assurance professionals who need to answer that question with confidence.

Drawing on real-world financial crime, audit and transformation experience, the series provides a structured approach to auditing AML/CFT, sanctions and broader financial crime frameworks - moving beyond checklist-based assurance towards risk-based, evidence-led assessment of control effectiveness.

Volume I - The Handbook
The Handbook provides the methodology.
It explores how Internal Audit should approach financial crime risk from planning and scoping through fieldwork, testing, challenge, findings and reporting. It examines the relationship between inherent risk, controls, residual risk and assurance, and shows auditors how to distinguish between a control that exists, a control that operates, and a control that is genuinely effective.
The emphasis throughout is on judgement, evidence and outcomes.
>Volume II - The Toolkit
The Toolkit turns the methodology into practice.
It provides practical frameworks, templates, testing approaches and working tools that can be adapted to financial institutions of different sizes, business models and risk profiles.
Rather than starting every audit with a blank page, practitioners can use the Toolkit to structure audit planning, risk assessment, control evaluation, testing, documentation, findings and reporting.
Together, the two volumes bridge the gap between knowing what good financial crime audit should look like and being able to deliver it.

Designed for practitioners
The series is particularly relevant to:

• Internal Audit and Financial Crime Audit teams
• Heads of Audit and Chief Audit Executives
• MLROs and Financial Crime Officers
• Compliance Testing and Assurance teams
• Second Line Compliance functions
• Risk and Control professionals
• Consultants conducting independent financial crime reviews
• Regulators and supervisors assessing assurance frameworks

The central message: Internal Audit's role is not simply to determine whether controls are present. It is to provide independent assurance over whether the organisation understands its financial crime risk, whether its controls respond appropriately to thatrisk, whether those controls operate as intended - and ultimately, whether the framework is effective. The Financial Crime Internal Audit: Handbook & Toolkit provides practitioners with both the methodology and the tools to do exactly that.

Two volumes. One complete approach

• Understand the risk.
• Challenge the control.
• Test the evidence.
• Assess effectiveness.
• Deliver assurance.