Fraud Examiner Salary in 2027: Pay by Employer, Location and Credential

Fraud examiner salary depends on whose numbers you trust. The BLS has no fraud examiner line, so we show its closest match, financial examiners, with a median of $94,160 a year in May 2025. The group where O*NET files fraud examiners had $81,100. Certified Fraud Examiners who answered a professional survey reported $101,000 with a four-year degree.

What Is the Average Fraud Examiner Salary?

You’ll want to think of it as a range with two anchors. Financial examiners are the BLS’s closest match, though many of them work as regulators rather than fraud investigators. O*NET places fraud examiners, investigators and analysts in a broader BLS group called Financial Specialists, All Other. Both use May 2025 wages.

The median is the middle: half of workers earned more and half earned less. The gap between the 10th and 90th percentiles is wide. For financial examiners, the 90th percentile is about three times the 10th. That means your pay depends heavily on where you land, and you can influence a lot of it.

Most fraud examiners work under other titles, such as fraud analyst, financial investigator or special investigations unit investigator, so no single line covers them.

If you’d be doing something closer to an insurance fraud investigator, the BLS group for claims adjusters, examiners and investigators gives you another reference point, with a median of $78,000. We cover that title in our fraud investigator salary guide and the data-focused version in our fraud analyst salary guide.

How Much Do Fraud Examiners Make by Employer?

Employer is the biggest swing factor we can measure. The BLS lists May 2025 median pay for financial examiners in five industries, along with the share of all financial examiner jobs each one held in 2025.

Banks employ the largest share of financial examiners. The federal government pays the most of these five, but it hires only a tenth of the workforce. If you want a federal role, plan early, because the entry requirements are specific. We cover what they ask for in our fraud examiner career guide.

What Do Federal Fraud Examiners Earn?

Federal pay is public, so it’s the clearest look you’ll get at how a career ladder works. You can read the exact numbers before you apply. We’ll use the FDIC as the example because its pay tables are published in full. The FDIC examines and supervises banks, and its Financial Institution Specialist program trains people toward a commissioned examiner role within three and a half years.

How Does Pay Rise With Grade?

The FDIC uses its own grade labels, CG-01 through CG-15. Its 2026 base salary structure sets a minimum and maximum at each grade, and location pay gets added on top.

Those ranges are wide on purpose. You move up the range as you complete training and gain experience, and you move to a new grade when you take on harder work.

In practice, you start as a Financial Institution Specialist, and the FDIC says its structured training can take you to commissioned examiner within three and a half years.

A closed Case Manager announcement shows what comes later. For the CG-13 level it asked for a year of specialized experience at the grade below. For CG-14 it asked for a year at grade 13, including leading examinations or serving as a caseload manager. So you climb one grade at a time, and each step asks you to show the work you did at the last one.

What Does Location Add to a Starting Salary?

The FDIC’s pay page for Financial Institution Specialists shows a CG-7 base of $58,000, which sits inside the CG-07 range above, plus a location rate that depends on the duty station. Location rates across the FDIC run from 17.06 percent to 51.75 percent. A few examples:

Your offer depends on the posting, so read the grade and location in each announcement before you compare two jobs. The FDIC also says commissioned examiners may be eligible for a $10,000 commissioning bonus, and we list other perks in the FAQ.

How Does the General Schedule Compare?

Some federal agencies pay on the government-wide General Schedule instead of an agency scale. The table shows 2026 base pay, with no location pay added, from the published salary table.

Location pay changes the picture. In the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington area, the location rate is 33.94 percent. Add it, and a grade 13 salary runs from $121,785 to $158,322. IRS Criminal Investigation, for example, says it likely hires special agents at grade 7 or grade 9. If you’re aiming for the investigative side of federal work, see our IRS special agent guide.

Does the CFE Credential Raise Your Pay?

The ACFE says yes. Its Compensation Guide reports that CFEs earn a 32 percent premium over non-certified colleagues, and that the premium has grown substantially since its 2013/2014 guide. In 2024, CFEs with a four-year degree reported earning $101,000 a year. The median for CFEs with a graduate degree was $112,000.

You should read those numbers with the sample in mind. The ACFE hired an outside research company, which emailed a questionnaire to about 90,000 members in April 2024 and received 4,449 complete responses, a 5 percent response rate. The people who answered were CFEs and associate members, and they reported their own pay.

That makes the figures useful for comparison inside the field, but they aren’t a count of everyone who investigates fraud. The ACFE’s blog adds that advanced degrees and continuing education can further raise your earning potential.

For the full breakdown of the credential’s effect, head to our CFE salary guide. If you’re still deciding whether the credential fits your plan, our CFE exam cost guide shows what you’d spend to get it.

What Pushes Fraud Examiner Pay Higher or Lower?

Several things work together, and you control more of them than you might expect. This table pulls together what the sources say and what you can do about each one.

Which States Pay Fraud Examiners the Most?

The state table below lists every state where the BLS publishes a median for financial examiners, so we won’t repeat it. The headline is the District of Columbia, with a median of $198,720. New York follows at $128,920, then Connecticut at $120,530. At the other end, you’ll see Arkansas at $57,590, West Virginia at $60,590 and Hawaii at $62,720.

Pay isn’t the only number to check. Jobs cluster in a few places, so where you live affects how many openings you can reach, and moving costs you something too.

New York has more financial examiner jobs than any other state, and its median sits well above the national $94,160. Texas and Florida have plenty of jobs but lower medians, so weigh pay against your own living costs.

How Does Fraud Examiner Pay Compare With Related Jobs?

Financial examiners earn a median $10,480 more than accountants and auditors, the BLS group that includes most accountants. All of these related jobs use May 2025 medians.

You can compare the accounting side in our forensic accountant salary guide and the compliance side in our compliance officer salary guide. Our fraud examiner career guide explains how the job itself differs from these.

How Do You Use These Numbers to Plan?

Don’t fix on a single figure. Use the sources like a checklist, and you’ll end up with a number you can defend when you negotiate.

1. Pick your anchor. If your job is regulatory, start with the financial examiner figures. If it’s an investigator or analyst role, start with the broader group at $81,100.
2. Check the employer type. Federal pay and securities firms sit well above banking at the median, so ask where your posting falls.
3. Read the location. Federal postings spell out location pay. Private employers usually don’t, so ask about it in the first call.
4. Add the credential if you qualify. Your pay may rise by the premium the ACFE reports, but only if you meet the experience rule.
5. Count the extras. A bonus or loan repayment can matter as much as a few thousand dollars of base pay, and the FDIC lists both.

Then compare your offers on the same footing. A job with location pay and a loan repayment program isn’t the same as a job without them, even when the base salary matches.

Can a Degree Help You Earn More?

A degree helps you qualify, and the ACFE’s numbers suggest graduate study shows up in pay for people who hold the credential. The BLS also says employers often prefer a master’s degree in accounting or business administration for senior examiner roles. Programs that teach the job directly exist at every level. A few charge the amounts below, taken from each school’s own program details.

Of the programs we track, the median cost is $775 a credit at the master’s level and $458 at the bachelor’s level.

Southern New Hampshire University and Purdue University Global both offer fully online bachelor’s degrees with fraud-focused concentrations, which suits you if you’re working while you study. Southern New Hampshire University runs 8-week terms and charges active-duty servicemembers $250 a credit. Military tuition reductions at Purdue University Global run 55 percent for current servicemembers and 38 percent for veterans.

Total cost depends on transfer credit, fees and pace, so ask each school for a full estimate. Our master’s in fraud examination list and our list for CFE exam prep show how the programs compare on cost, format and more.