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The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between internal audit organisational status, competencies, activities and fraud management. As a corollary, this paper examines the contribution made by the internal audit organisational status, the internal audit competence and the internal audit activities on fraud management in financial services firms.

This study is cross-sectional and correlational, and it uses firm-level data that were collected by means of a questionnaire survey from a sample of 54 financial services firms in Kampala – Uganda.

Results suggest that the internal audit organisational status and the internal audit competence are significant predictors of fraud management. Contrary to previous thinking, internal audit activities do not significantly predict fraud management. Therefore, once internal auditors have appropriate status and are competent in an organisation, they are likely to perform activities that enhance fraud management.

This study focuses on financial services firms in Uganda, and it is possible that these results are only applicable to the financial services sector. More research is therefore needed to further understand the contribution of the internal audit constructs on fraud management in other sectors such as the public sector.

The results are important for internal audit policy development, for example, in terms of prescribing the competences and reporting lines for the internal auditors to enhance fraud management in the financial services sector.

As far as the authors are aware, no research has hitherto been undertaken that investigates the individual contribution of internal audit organisation status, competence and its activities as internal audit constructs on fraud management.

The purpose of this paper is to overview the goals of corporate governance in the financial services sector from a theoretical perspective. This sector has experienced some high profile corporate scandals, including BCCI, Barings Bank, and Equitable Life. Yet the UK's Combined Code on Corporate Governance does not give any special prominence to the corporate governance issues involved in this important and idiosyncratic business area.

First, the broad parameters of corporate governance are discussed, from a theoretical perspective. From this particular characteristics are derived applicable to the financial services sector. These issues are examined and the extent to which they have been addressed by contemporary academic or policy‐related studies is considered, and also how they are related to the activities of the main bodies responsible for external oversight.

The main attention of this paper is banks and a key issue arising is that the typical structure of their balance‐sheets – high leverage, and a mismatch in their assets and liabilities, mean that it is imperative that they keep lenders' confidence, and imply a wider duty of care for bank directors. External regulators (FSA) and auditors have vital oversight functions, which should encourage sound governance practices. One avenue of future research would be to assess the effectiveness of compliance in the UK, given that financial companies have obligations concerning both FSA requirements and Combined Code provisions.

Some key issues pertaining to corporate governance in financial services are addressed, highlighting their significance, to encourage further investigation by academics and practitioners in the field.

The aim of this study is to investigate the competitiveness of the selected services in Turkey in comparison with the EU and the selected EU countries based on three comparative advantage indices.

Three different revealed comparative advantage indices were utilised in a combined way. Import and export figures of six service sectors were taken into account for the period of 2000-2010. The selected services are: transportation, travel, construction, financial services and insurance, communications and IT services, and personal, cultural and recreational services. Consistency of the results was achieved through correlation analyses.

Strong comparative advantages exist for Turkey in construction, tourism and transportation sectors. Although Turkish financial and insurance and communication and computer-information sectors appear to be weak compared to EU, there is a substantial potential for improvement.

A detailed comparative investigation of services' competitiveness for Turkey was provided. The policy decision makers in Turkey and in Europe's selected countries can utilise the findings and recommendations of the study for projection of the investigated sectors.

This study examines the role that information technology plays in supporting relationships between customers and suppliers in the financial service industry. It traces the interrelationships among the different sectors of this industry – brokerage houses, retail banks, institutional banks, mutual funds, insurance underwriters, and others – and identifies roles that information technology and electronic service delivery can play in creating and supporting inter‐organizational integration across sector boundaries. It further identifies the opportunities for and threats to these relationships caused, in large part, by the continuing evolution of information technology. This study will help managers in the financial services to analyze the opportunities and assess the risks of building tighter relationships with their customers and suppliers through electronic commerce.

The purpose of this study is to offer service practitioners evidence about: the factors that financial institutions consider in order to evaluate the impact on the entire company of an eventual decision to eliminate a financial service from the range; the degree of influence that these factors exert on management; and the contextual conditions that shape the above degree of influence.

The research is based on 20 in‐depth interviews with higher echelon managers from an equal number of UK financial institutions and a mail survey of 112 specific elimination case histories from an equal number of UK banks, building societies and insurance companies.

The impact of a financial service's eventual elimination on the relationships of the company with its customers is rated as the most influential evaluation factor. Other influential evaluation factors are the impact on the public image of the financial institution and the impact on the sales and the profitability of other financial services in the range. However, the degree of influence is largely situation specific.

The implications are twofold. First, in managers' attempts to project the impact of a financial service's eventual elimination from the range they may avoid imitating competitors. Second, managers may avoid being mechanistic in evaluating the impact of eventual elimination decisions.

This paper represents the first empirical attempt to shed light on the way in which service companies evaluate the impact of a service's elimination from the range.

The Single Market in financial services (investment funds, banking, insurance and investment services) has had a long gestation and has been a mixed success. It is now faced with a new challenge, the adaptation of the Community regulatory framework to an electronic environment. This paper reviews progress in creating a Single Market in financial services, in particular the application of freedoms to provide services and of establishment and the principles of mutual recognition, home country control and the single licence. It also identifies issues in relation to electronic advertising, marketing and provision of financial services on a cross‐border basis. The paper seeks to show that existing and proposed Community legislation provides a framework for future development of this new medium:

This paper aims to examine the extent of and key determinants for bank and insurance provider selection and usage by business customers from the small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) segment, thereby aiming to increase understanding of the drivers of customers' cross‐buying behaviour across these financial service sectors.

Semi‐structured interviews were carried out with key decision makers from 22 SMEs within one country. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data.

Empirical findings suggest use of multiple banks as the norm among SMEs, whereas insurances are dominantly purchased from a single provider. As SME customers appear to prefer using separate, independent providers for their banking and insurance services, absence of customer loyalty programs, unfavourable pricing of the total offering and image conflicts were identified as main factors limiting the willingness to cross‐buy across these financial services sectors.

This qualitative research is focused on the financial industry within one country and bound to smaller business customers, limiting the generalisability of the findings.

The results imply that in order to succeed in cross‐selling bank and insurance services in the SME segment, financial service providers should improve their cross‐selling concepts by creating customer loyalty programs that would reward customer companies according to the use of multiple products in their total portfolio.

This study is the first to describe the customer perceived drivers of cross‐buying bank and insurance services from the same service provider in the business‐to‐business context.

The impact of a firm’s strategic performance measurement system (SPMS) on its customer-focused strategy, under varying contexts, has largely been documented in the literature. However, the system’s capacity to positively influence the firm strategy through its impact on the firm’s peculiar internal and external capabilities, in the peculiar context of the developing countries’ financial services sector, has so far skipped a thorough academic enquiry. This study, using Indonesia’ financial services sector as its ‘site’, aims to fill this void in the literature.

The authors gleaned the study’s empirical data from financial services sector firms using survey questionnaire and analyzed it using SmartPLS. A total of 107 valid responses from management members of different financial services sector firms in Indonesia were deemed useable.

The study findings support the paper’s main thesis. The findings revealed that the strategic PMS contributes to enhancing firms’ market orientation and robustness by positively contributing to their customer-focused strategy from three distinct dimensions – competitors, customers and organizational learning.

The authors posit that an effective customer-focused strategy can be accomplished by purposefully adapting the focus of the firm’s strategic PMS to positively influence the organizational learning, which subsequently translates into the firm’s high competitiveness in the marketplace.

The unexplored link between the SPMS, firm’s internal and external capabilities and customer-focused strategy in the particular context of a developing country’s financial services sector will not only fill the current void in the literature but also instigate a new academic debate. The study will also contribute to the management accounting practice in service firms in the developing countries context.

The purpose of this paper is to chart the development of financial services education from its origins in the insurance industry to the current offering for people who wish to work in the life and non-life insurance industry. Financial services education within Ireland has evolved over time. Originally perceived to be an outpost of the British Insurance Institute, it is the responsibility of a variety of institutes that operate in the financial sectors, covering a range which includes insurance, banking and credit unions. Where tertiary education was optional, it is now a requirement of the regulator that people working in this sector have achieved at least this standard. Additionally, specialist qualifications for those working in the industry are being developed with academic involvement, as the institutes work to provide professional qualifications.

To compare and contrast the Irish regulatory requirements, an analysis of other European Union (EU) national requirements was conducted, illustrating differences in education and current certification requirements.

Educational requirements in Ireland go a long way in terms of ensuring that workers in financial services are adequately skilled in terms of academic, professional, ethical and continuous professional development (CPD). The Irish system covers a lot of aspects of financial services minimum competency code that is implemented in other EU jurisdictions, and in some cases, it has a unique approach in CPD.

Serves as a comparable study of minimum competency requirements of EU for financial services employees and highlights differences in requirements across borders.

This is a unique study of minimum competency code that has been implemented by financial regulators across EU member states and its impact in the industry in terms of raising the requirements of people involved in the sector.

The purpose of this study is to detail about the India’s service sector with different aspects of services and the opportunities or challenges that lie within it.

Preliminary part of the study covers the following details of the India’s services sector: services gross domestic product (GDP), individual states/union territories’ services contributions, services foreign direct investment (FDI), services export, services employment, services inflation and overall service performance. Then the study compares India’s services sector performances with the top 15 services performance countries in the world in terms of GDP.

Study found R&D services, legal services, media and broadcasting services and “internal trade and repairs services” to be the potential services sub-sectors that will boost the services sector growth in future. Finally, the study concluded with the implication of the present study finding/results for the present Indian Government policies related to the services, trade, FDI for economic growth and employment.

The study has significant public policy content. The research focuses on the economic and commercial impact, mainly by practice.

The paper is original and brings out some valuable finding that will help the policymakers and economists to make policy decision regarding India’s services: sector, trade and employment. The study has found R&D services, legal services, media & broadcasting services and internal trade and repairs services as the potential services sub-sectors which are new and not addressed by any other studies.