Rich Lanza

Executive summary

Rich is a Managing Director in the Innovation Team, where he uses his 25+ years of audit analytic experience to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the firm’s risk analysis, audit, and inspection approach.

Prior to joining Grant Thornton, Rich managed his own firm for over 12 years, working directly with internal audit departments, advisory practices and cost recovery firms to integrate his designed analytic systems into their business processes.

Rich previously automated the internal audit teams of Toys “R” Us, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Disclosure, Inc. and Lafarge where he deployed automated continuous monitoring toolkits. He also held technology roles as an ACL and IDEA trainer with AuditWatch, as well as, managing the Year 2000 project for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Rich began his career for KPMG Peat Marwick in their Manhattan middle market audit practice.

Professional involvement Rich serves on the Expert Network of the International Institute for Analytics where he first introduced letter analytics, a new textual analytics approach. He has served as the President for two Institute of Internal Auditor chapters (Northern Virginia and Northern New Jersey), as well as, been a past member of the NYSSCPA – Technology Assurance Committee.

Professional qualifications and memberships

• CPA (New York)
• Certified Fraud Examiner
• Chartered Global Management Accountant
• AICPA member / AAA member

Presentations and publications

Rich is the author or co-author of 20 publications and training courses with over 50 articles written for audit and accounting publications. These written materials include 101 ACL Software Applications: A Toolkit for Today’s Auditor which he wrote over 20 years ago, Proactively Detecting Fraud Using Computer Assisted Audit Reports that he wrote as a research project for the Institute of Internal Auditors and led to him receiving the Outstanding Achievement in Business Award from the Associated of Certified Fraud Examiners.  He also wrote the only publication on the cost recovery industry for Wiley & Sons entitled Cost Recovery: Turning Your Accounts Payable Department into a Profit Center.  Rich is a regular presenter for webinars and conferences by CFO.com, the Institute of Internal Auditors, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and AuditNet®.

Education

BBA from PACE University with a focus in Public Accounting