FRC publishes latest audit quality review results
News types: Generic Announcement, Inspection
Published: 20 July 2022
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has today published its annual inspection and supervision results of the largest audit firms (BDO, Deloitte, EY, Grant Thornton, KPMG, Mazars and PwC). Overall, 75% of audits inspected were good or required limited improvement (compared to 71% in 2021 and 67% in 2020).
The number of audits considered good or requiring limited improvement has improved on the previous two years. It is clear that a combination of the FRC’s increasingly assertive supervision approach, as well as investment from the firms in their systems, people and capabilities to improve audit quality, is starting to have a positive impact.
Encouragingly, five of the largest firms had no audits requiring significant improvements. KPMG’s individual audit inspections have significantly improved, which is promising, but is not yet a trend. The FRC will continue to closely monitor KPMG banking audits.*
The inspection results at Mazars and BDO remain unacceptable. Four of the eight audits reviewed at Mazars, and five of the 12 audits reviewed at BDO required more than limited improvements. Specific supervisory plans have been developed to closely monitor BDO and Mazars’ priority actions. The FRC will continue to ensure the challenger firms are prioritising high quality audit with a view to offering increased choice and resilience in the market, but growth ambitions must also be tempered by a focus on quality first and foremost.
The FRC’s Chief Executive, Sir Jon Thompson said:
“While it is encouraging to see some improvement in audit quality at the largest audit firms, consistent, long-term improvement is still required across the market. We will monitor closely the potentially negative impact on the public interest that the de-risking by firms of challenging audits may have on audit quality.
The FRC will continue to build on our assertive supervisory approach to ensure firms are consistently delivering high quality audit which will drive increased choice and resilience in the market over time”.
Read the FRC audit quality inspection and supervision overview report
Read the seven individual audit firm specific reports
Listen to Kate O'Neill and Sarah Rapson discuss the annual inspection and supervision results in our latest podcast.
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