Internal Audit: Smarter assurance driving greater comfort

Within every organisation is an environment of opportunity, risk and control. There is no success without risk and, as technology increases the speed at which decisions can be made and new processes implemented, risk will constantly change.

Internal audit is a function of management that provides comfort and assurance around the risk and control environment in an organisation. In doing so, it enables good governance and offers a greater opportunity for an organisation to achieve its objectives.

Once bound by a focus on a few specific areas, internal audit is now defined by its agility and flexibility. Its power lies in its ability to cut across all areas of risk across the whole of the business.

Transformation through powerful diversity

No longer a pure play around financial control, an internal audit function that truly empowers a business must have access to various specialists and professions, backgrounds and talents.

Such a mix of expertise is essential as today’s risks are many and varied, and so are the expectations of stakeholders.

Our clients tell us that our Internal Audit teams demonstrate industry best practice bringing subject matter experts together to help solve client challenges without losing the focus of the internal audit review.

We bring the best of PwC’s people, processes and technology to our clients through the internal audit lens.

How we deliver transparency and instil confidence and trust

From financial management to organisational culture and from major transformation projects to cyber risk, our internal audit professionals bring to the surface and test an organisation’s processes and controls, as well as the business’s agility and ability to respond to unknown threats.

Our findings to the Board and executive management not only offer actions and remedies where they are needed, but leaves organisations with a level of comfort in relation to their controls and how risks are mitigated.

Our clients regularly ask us to help them in areas such as:

Data analytics and visualisation techniques
Lean and Six Sigma to improve operational efficiency
Root cause analysis to ensure the right lever is being pulled for change
Behavioural Assurance to understand the roles behaviours can play
Benchmarking to measure the business against up to 500 other PwC internal and external audit clients across a range of financial and non-financial criteria.

Our internal audit services include:

Outsourcing
Co-sourcing
Staff augmentation and secondments
Function transformation and advisory
Quality assurance reviews
Training.

We bring the right people with the right skills to a particular challenge or subject area and our experience and perspectives from other leading client organisations in areas such as cyber, data analytics, supply chain, organisational culture, transformational projects and more.

In doing so, our internal audit professionals provide great confidence around key risks, vital processes, best practice efficiencies and growth opportunities.