Glossary

Account takeover is a fraud in which a criminal gains control of a genuine customer's existing account, typically with stolen credentials, and uses it to move money, buy goods or take over the customer's identity.

Accountability is the obligation to answer for decisions, actions and results, and to accept consequences, to a person or body with the right to ask. It cannot be fully handed to someone else.

Advance fee fraud is a scam in which victims are persuaded to pay money upfront for a loan, prize, investment or other benefit that never materialises, with further fees often demanded afterwards.

The agency problem arises when one party, the agent, acts for another, the principal, but has different interests and more information. In companies, managers may pursue their own goals rather than shareholders' interests.

Algorithmic bias is a systematic error in an automated system that produces unfair results for certain people or groups, often because of skewed data, flawed design choices or the way outputs are used.

An allow list is a record of names or parties already reviewed and cleared as not being a sanctions match, used so the screening system stops raising the same false alert again.

An annual general meeting is the yearly meeting where shareholders receive the accounts, vote on matters such as electing directors, appointing the auditor and pay policy, and question the board.

An anti-fraud policy is a formal document, approved by senior leadership, that states the organisation's position on fraud and sets out roles, expected behaviour, reporting routes and how suspected cases are handled.

Anti-money laundering covers the laws and controls that make it hard for criminals to disguise where illegal money came from and spend it as if it were clean. Paired with counter-terrorist financing, it is usually written AML/CFT.

Application fraud is the use of false information, forged documents or a stolen identity to obtain an account, card, loan or other financial product that would otherwise be refused.

An asset freeze is a legal ban on moving, selling, transferring or otherwise dealing with funds and property belonging to a sanctioned person, while ownership stays with that person.

Asset-liability management is the practice of managing the gap between what a financial institution owns and what it owes, in timing, amount and rate, to keep liquidity, earnings and capital within set limits.

An audit finding is a point in an audit report where the auditor records that practice fell short of what was expected, backed by evidence, a cause, the resulting risk and a rating.

An audit plan is a document setting out which areas the internal audit function will review over a period, usually a year, when, with what resources and why, based on an assessment of risk.

An audit quality review is an inspection by an independent oversight body of how well audit firms carry out audits, usually by examining samples of audit files and the firm’s own quality control systems.

The audit risk model says the risk of an auditor giving a clean opinion on misstated accounts depends on inherent risk, control risk and detection risk. Auditors adjust their testing to keep that overall risk low.

An audit trail is a time-ordered record showing who did what, when and why in a system or process, so that a transaction or decision can be traced from start to finish.

Automated controls are checks built into software that run without anyone pressing a button, such as approval limits, input validation and system-enforced access rules. The process cannot move on unless the rule is met.