Blockchain for Financial Management: A Survey of Transparent Reporting and Fraud Mitigation Practices

The integration of blockchain into financial management has emerged as a pathway to greater transparency, accountability, and fraud mitigation across modern financial ecosystems. Unlike traditional centralized systems, blockchain enables immutable, decentralized, and verifiable record-keeping that can enhance the credibility of reporting and auditing. This survey synthesizes established literature and practice to examine blockchain’s role in financial reporting, emphasizing tamper-resistant audit trails, automated controls via smart contracts, and near real-time disclosure. It reviews applications in banking, corporate governance, insurance, and public finance, illustrating how distributed ledgers can mitigate risks of data manipulation, insider fraud, and asset misrepresentation. The paper also analyzes key challenges scalability, interoperability, regulatory acceptance, and privacy and identifies research directions blending technical advances with policy and governance. Together, these insights offer a consolidated view of blockchain-enabled financial management and outline priorities for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to strengthen trust, accountability, and efficiency in global finance.