IAASA’s quality assurance review process is designed to assess the effectiveness of the statutory auditor or the audit firm’s internal quality control system through assessment of the design of the internal quality control system, compliance testing and review of individual audits of public interest entities.
IAASA intends to make audit quality inspection reports on audit firms that carry out statutory audits of public-interest entities available to the public for 2019 inspections onwards. The proposed audit quality inspection reports will detail findings arising in relation to the effectiveness of the design or implementation of the firm’s quality control system and will indicate the severity of each finding that has arisen along with IAASA’s recommendation for remediation of deficiencies and/or improvements going forward. The proposed audit quality inspection reports will also provide a summary of all public-interest entity audits inspected as part of the quality assurance review and will disclose the grading that has been assigned to each of the audits inspected. The names of the individual public-interest entity audits inspected will not be disclosed. IAASA intends to issue guidelines for users of the audit quality inspection reports. It is also IAASA’s intention to publish a statement, in reference to each audit quality inspection report, disclosing whether, or not, a firm has implemented IAASA’s recommendations within 12 months of the date of the audit quality inspection report