Internal Controls and Financial Risk Management

Internal Controls and Financial Risk Management is a 5-day senior-level controls course delivered by Mars Training Centre UK in London, Dubai, Manama, Amman and Nairobi — designed for finance directors, internal audit directors, controllers, risk officers, and senior leaders responsible for the financial control environment of their business.

Internal control has moved from a back-office accounting concern to a board-level discipline. Material weaknesses make front-page news, restatements destroy executive credibility, and regulators expect senior leaders to attest personally to the strength of the controls under their authority. The leaders who run financial control well give their organisations cleaner reporting, smoother audits, and the discretion to invest energy on growth rather than remediation.

Across five focused days, you will work through control frameworks, process-level controls, IT general controls, risk assessment, fraud and error prevention, and the governance that sits above the whole control environment. The cases are drawn from corporate control programmes in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the Middle East, and the work is delivered by senior practitioners with audit and finance experience.

What You Will Learn

• Apply recognised control frameworks to your organisation's control environment.
• Map material financial processes and the controls within them.
• Assess control design and operating effectiveness with discipline.
• Identify and remediate control weaknesses and segregation-of-duties conflicts.
• Build a defensible financial risk register at executive level.
• Assess IT general controls supporting financial reporting systems.
• Apply fraud risk assessment techniques to a finance function.
• Build a remediation programme for identified control gaps.
• Communicate control status to audit committees and external auditors.
• Lead a financial control programme across a multi-entity group.

How You Will Benefit

You will leave with a sharper controls toolkit and a Mars Certificate of Completion.

Your organisation will gain a senior leader who runs a tighter control environment, reduces the audit burden, identifies risks earlier, and brings credible answers to audit committee and board questions on the strength of financial controls.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is designed for senior leaders responsible for control and risk, including:

• Finance Directors and Group Financial Controllers
• Heads of Internal Audit and Senior Internal Auditors
• Chief Risk Officers and senior risk managers
• Heads of Financial Reporting and Technical Accounting
• Compliance Directors with financial control responsibility
• Audit Committee members and Non-Executive Directors
• Senior consultants supporting control and risk programmes

The seniority floor is senior manager and above. The programme is delivered in person over five consecutive days, with a Mars Certificate of Completion awarded on the final day.