|
Appointed by a publicly-held company's board of directors, the audit committee assists in the supervision of the company's internal audit and operations. Committee members are normally drawn from members of the Company's board of directors and usually (sometimes exclusively) include a number of independent, non-executive or outside directors. They are responsible for selection of the independent auditor and receipt of audit results.
Key areas of focus include:
-
Overseeing the financial reporting process.
-
Monitoring internal control process.
Over the years, various initiatives to strengthen and increase the responsibilities of audit committees have been made including pressure for the committee composition to include more independent directors.
This presents a particular problem for the committee
- They need to know that the things they ask for have been actioned and done.
- They need to be able to track actions and owners and need to have visibility of the speed or responsiveness with which these tasks are undertaken.
- They need to have a suitable method to allow risk reporting and “whistle blowing” information to be fed through to them.
Without direct managerial control over the various functions involved in carrying out their tasks the committee can find it problematic to make the necessary assertions regarding their confidence in the reporting and control of the business.
For the Chairman of the Audit Committee the Categoric solution provides:
- An increase in assurance that things are happening in a timely and appropriate way
- A tool to empower and strengthen “early warning” and management of risks within the organisation.
- A method of monitoring managements’ responses to any significant findings and recommendations made by Internal Audit, Group Risk etc.
- Automatic notification, escalation and reporting of non actioned activities<
- An opportunity to proactively manage audit fees.
- A method of moving from a one-off project based compliance initiative to an ongoing process that adds business value
|
