By Kenneth Oboh

Corporate fraud is no longer a discrete event, but a moving target shaped by fast-evolving technology, sprawling data, and increasingly sophisticated threat actors. While organizations have invested heavily in compliance and controls, the gap between policy and practice often remains where fraud takes root. These are inside processes, permissions, and culture. As businesses digitize their finance functions and connect critical systems across geographies, the stakes for getting risk management right have never been higher. The most relevant question is whether those controls are continuously tested, monitored, and embedded in day-to-day decision-making.

Opeyemi Lagunju, an accounting and risk management professional, with more than five years of experience navigating financial analysis, audit assurance, and ERP transformations, is a trusted voice on anti-fraud strategy and risk governance across industries.

Lagunju’s perspective was shaped by her consulting experience, including her international exposure and role as an Audit & Assurance Senior Associate at one of the Big Four accounting groups. There, she specialized in controls that underpin financial reporting, access governance, change management, and data integrity. “Audit taught me to think end-to-end, and that if one link is broken, the whole chain weakens. From journal entries to ERP role design, every control is part of a single chain.” she notes.

Her academic foundation is equally formidable. She holds a Master of Science in Accounting from Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Professional Accounting in Boston and an MBA with a concentration in Business Analytics from the same institution. Before that, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. “Analytics changed my approach to risk,” she says. “When you treat controls as data, you can measure their health, forecast their failure, and intervene before losses occur.”

The Anti-Fraud Operating System

Lagunju noted that “The Anti-Fraud Operating System is a layered model that fuses policy, process, and platform into a single rhythm of prevention and response. It starts by mapping process risks to system permissions so access mirrors accountability at every step.” As she puts it, “Most fraud vectors are permissions misaligned with responsibilities. When access doesn’t mirror accountability, it creates shadows where bad actors can hide. Your risk register should speak the same language as your ERP roles. If you can’t trace a role to a risk, you haven’t finished the design.”

She adds that continuity is just as critical: “Controls shouldn’t be annual tasks but should be automated checks that run every day on the data they protect. If a control sleeps for 364 days, that means your exposure is awake the entire time. Make the control an always-on sensor embedded in the workflow, not an external audit after the fact. When controls are continuous, exceptions become early warnings.”

To ensure the effectiveness of the system, Lagunju says that “a red flag is only useful if the right person sees it and knows what to do within hours, not weeks,” She continues “Speed turns signals into savings. Route the alert to the owner of the risk, give them a clear process, and measure turnaround time as a core KPI. If an alert lingers, it quietly becomes a loss.” As such, anti-fraud stops being a periodic audit exercise and becomes an effective operating system that strengthens trust, reduces leakage, and scales with the business.

She’s a proponent of continuous controls monitoring (CCM) that turns static controls into living guardrails. Examples include automated SoD conflict scans, vendor master file change alerts, and unusual posting pattern detection in subledgers. “If an invoice is created and approved by the same identity after hours, I want to know immediately,” she says. “Speed is the difference between a near miss and a loss.”

Culture, Accountability, and Technology

Beyond tooling, Lagunju emphasizes culture. “We don’t prevent fraud by distrusting people but by designing processes that don’t rely on blind trust.” She argues for plain-language risk briefings for non-finance teams, control champions within operations, and leadership that treats exceptions as opportunities to improve, not to blame. “If people fear escalation, they will bury signals. A healthy risk culture surfaces weak spots early.”

She recommends three lines of defense with modern twists: finance operations owning real-time control checks; an independent risk function validating design and stress-testing scenarios; and internal audit pressure-testing both model and human behavior.

With deep experience in ERP systems and accounting software solutions, Lagunju views technology as both an amplifier and a risk: “ERP is only as secure as its role design and change discipline. Teams require sound governance as a backbone of trustworthy automation.” She advises organizations to harden the change pipeline.” She also warns against overreliance on dashboards without data governance: “Dashboards can anesthetize leaders with color coding. Show me lineage, thresholds, and ownership. There must be clear ownership, and accountability. Leveraging technology without these controls creates risk.”

Measuring What Matters

To keep anti-fraud programs pragmatic, Lagunju urges focusing on a small set of actionable metrics such as percentage of high-risk SoD conflicts resolved, time-to-remediate for critical access issues, anomalous transaction rate by process, and near-miss conversion. “Measure momentum,” she says. “Controls that get healthier each month will outpace threats.” She highlights vendor onboarding with dual-identity validation, bank account ownership verification, and a 72-hour cooling-off period before first payment.

Lagunju’s outlook is both disciplined and optimistic. “Fraud risks won’t vanish,” she says, “but a finance function that treats risk as a design problem can stay ahead.” Her counsel for leaders is to invest in processes that outlive platforms, analytics that inform action, and cultures that reward transparency. As organizations chase growth in a complex world, that design-first mindset may be the most valuable control of all.