93 per cent of US executives, board members and academics say the external corporate financial audit needs to evolve, with a majority (58 per cent) indicating technology is the force that will transform the profession, according to a new survey from the audit, tax and advisory firm - KPMG and Forbes Insights.
About one third of respondents believe that auditors should go beyond certifying numbers, and 59 per cent think that while the auditor role should stay the same, how the role is performed should evolve, states the Audit 2020: A Focus on Change report.
“As companies embrace data and analytics in their financial reporting and growth strategies, the types of controls and risk assessment needed are evolving,” said Scott Marcello, KPMG’s vice chair of Audit in a statement. “This is just one example of how technology and digitisation are impacting our role as auditors. The audit profession is already changing to meet this new landscape.”
The report points to the innovations underway in the audit profession due to the explosion of available data and the advent of more powerful capabilities to analyse it. For auditor associates, the top-ranked benefit of technology is that it provides tools for more sophisticated analysis (80 per cent), while survey respondents overall value most highly the efficiency technology can bring (59 per cent).
Read the whole report here .