Internal Audit Effectiveness and Financial Risk Management: A Systematic Literature Review

Internal audit effectiveness is a major governance mechanism for strengthening financial risk management. However, the literature remains fragmented, as prior studies often examine internal control, governance, fraud, financial reporting quality, or audit technologies separately, without providing an integrated synthesis of their interactions. This study addresses this gap through a systematic literature review based on the PRISMA protocol. Searches conducted in Scopus and Web of Science for the 2015-2026 period resulted in a final corpus of 45 articles, including 25 from Scopus and 20 from Web of Science. The descriptive analysis reveals a strong predominance of quantitative empirical research, accounting for 42 articles, or 93.3% of the corpus, compared with two qualitative theoretical studies (4.4%) and one methodological modeling study (2.2%). The thematic coding identifies four dominant areas: governance, audit committees, and risk committees (16 articles; 35.6%); internal audit, internal control, risk management, and fraud (13; 28.9%); reporting quality and audit outcomes (11; 24.4%); and technology, cybersecurity, innovation, and sustainability (5; 11.1%). The findings confirm an overall positive contribution of internal audit to financial risk management, while showing that its effectiveness depends on governance quality, auditors' competencies, organizational maturity, and institutional context. This review therefore provides a structured overview of the field and identifies several avenues for future research.