This interview with ICAEW provides insights on dynamics influencing auditor choice in the PIE market.
Join us on 12 October and debate how to enhance reporting quality and companies’ resilience.
Accountancy Europe and the European Confederation of Directors Associations (ecoDa) will organise an in-person event in Brussels on 12 October 2023, at 10:00-16:50 CEST.
We will look into key areas influencing the corporate ecosystem’s resilience in a time of economic, geopolitical, technological and climate disruptions. With the main parties that play a role here – companies including their audit committees and shareholders, auditors, policymakers and supervisors – we will explore ways to collectively:
The programme and a great line-up of speakers are available on the event webpage where you can also still register for the event.
The European Commission (EC) launched a draft Delegated Act (DA) for stakeholder consultation on 13 September, proposing to increase the balance sheet and turnover thresholds in the 2013 EU Accounting Directive by an average of 25% to adjust them for inflation. This is a technical measure provided for by the Accounting Directive. The EC states that these size thresholds have remained unchanged since 2013 and that this will reduce the scope of companies having to comply with requirements on publication of financial statements, audit, as well as sustainability reporting.
The ‘final’ DA will be issued for the scrutiny of the European Parliament (EP) and the Council presumably later this year.
The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) released the exposure draft of its International Standard on Sustainability Assurance 5000, General Requirements for Sustainability Assurance Engagements (ISSA 5000).
ISSA 5000 as proposed is a stand-alone, principles-based standard that will serve as a global baseline for sustainability assurance engagements. It is profession-agnostic and reporting framework neutral. It includes requirements and application material for both reasonable and limited assurance engagements.
The consultation is open until 1 December 2023 and Accountancy Europe has already started developing its comment letter.
The IAASB proposed revisions to its International Standard on Auditing (ISA) 570: Going Concern. In our response, we welcomed the IAASB’s proposals enhancing auditors’:
We also raised our concerns regarding the proposals attempting to address issues that are within the remit of reporting standards as well as regarding the proportionality of the standard.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB-US) proposed changes to its auditing standards to strengthen auditor requirements to identify, evaluate, and communicate non-compliance with laws and regulations, including fraud.
Our comment letter highlights that:
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) released its latest Key Facts and Trends report, offering the newest statistics and trends on the UK’s accountancy and audit scene.
The report shows, amongst other things:
As informed in the previous issue of the Audit Update, the French audit regulatory authority High Council of Auditors (H3C) released a technical guidance on limited assurance over sustainability reporting. The guidance was prepared by a working group composed of representatives of H3C, statutory auditors and assurance providers.
The guidance is now available in English.
The UK FRC published its annual inspection and supervision results of the largest audit firms (BDO, Deloitte, EY, Grant Thornton, KPMG, Mazars and PwC) in July.
Overall, 77% of audits inspected were deemed good or required limited improvement. This percentage reflects a year-on-year improvement spanning four years, with a 10% increase compared to the 67% recorded in 2020.
Some of the key points include:
Accountancy Ireland
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UK government set to omit audit reform from legislative plans
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Attorney-client privilege at centre of clash over new US auditing rules
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UK accounting watchdog looks to tighten audit independence rules
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UK regulator tells auditors to justify ditching risky clients
Bloomberg
Poland suspends Deloitte from auditing financial reports
ICAEW
KPMG: Just 7% of auditors’ tasks open to generative AI
