Today’s leading internal audit organizations are no longer limited to hazard avoidance and compliance. They need to demonstrate their knowledge on risk management, business process improvement, which is a characteristic of a consultant rather than a classical internal auditor. Furthermore, internal auditors are no longer required to focus solely on financial audits. They increasingly need to provide value adding support to managements across all areas of operation, for example, Information Technology, Purchase-to-Pay process, Order-to-Cash process, regulatory compliance, etc. To meet these challenges, a growing number of organizations are looking for strategic partners to support their internal audit requirements.

SAC can help organizations improve their quality and effectiveness of internal audit process by:

• Advising and assisting in the development of internal audit and risk management methodologies
• Assessing whether the internal audit function is delivering effectively to stakeholders
• Providing internal audit resourcing solutions, including full outsourcing or complementing in-house functions with specialist skills or geographical coverage

Recent corporate scandals have eroded investor trust to some extent in corporate reporting. To reduce corporate malfeasance and protect investors, Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Sarbanes-Oxley) and Revised Clause 49 of Stock Exchange Listing Agreement were promulgated by the regulators in the Unites States and India, respectively. These legislations defined a new system of checks and balances to rebuild investor confidence.

Today’s corporate stakeholders expect greater assurance, more oversight and clear evidence of internal controls. The confidence of the investing community will only be restored after the gap between investor expectation, in terms of corporate governance and reporting, and what they have received in the past is bridged.

Sarbanes-Oxley and Clause 49 provides impetus to close the expectation gap by altering and expanding the responsibilities of key participants in the corporate reporting process. These legislations focus on improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate reporting.

SAC’s IAS Practice has developed solutions to help organizations reach the desired level of compliance as mandated by these legislations. The services include:

• Assisting corporate to document and evaluate internal controls
• Performing key controls testing
• Providing assistance in developing Internal Control Framework
• Providing assistance in developing Risk Management Framework
• Training personnel on COSO, methods of documenting controls, etc.
• Project management