Innovating against financial fraud

Established in 2003 as a special interest group, Accounting Research Institute (ARI) has evolved into one of just six Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education Centres of Excellence (HICoE).

ARI and its seven research centres (co-established with various national and international professional agencies) concentrate their research on the niche area of forensic accounting and Islamic financial criminology, although ARI is also sought out for its expertise in corporate governance, management and public sector accounting, financial reporting, taxation, auditing and accounting information systems.

“What we are trying to do, in terms of innovation, is to simplify the understanding of financial statements,” says Dr Normah Omar, ARI director. “We want to drive the importance of knowing financial numbers. We can do a financial statement analysis, look at the ratios and see the trend, which is a kind of innovation. We are not talking about rocket science here where we invent something new but when we talk about innovation in the social sciences, it could be in the form of looking at things in a more simplistic manner.”