Internal audit: key component of good corporate governance

We take care of your internal auditing. Perhaps you don't want or need your own internal audit department? Or maybe you can't cover special items with your own resources? We can perform individual tasks or even carry out the entire internal audit for you.

Our offer: We support the operational audit by taking over individual audit areas. 

Your advantage: You benefit from our know-how and our risk-oriented audit approach, meaning that you can make better use of your own resources. We are also your partner for specific fields such as IT, data protection, taxes, treasury or forensics.

Our offer: We take on responsibility for staffing and equipment, IT support and the monitoring of internal auditing processes. 

Your advantage: You have access to specialists in internal audit and in your industry, and whose presence spans the globe. We place value on an efficient and risk-oriented approach to annual audit planning and audit programmes.

We optimise your internal audit based on the following concept for the modular design of IA, whereby the internal audit is seen as a component of the overall control structure (risk management, internal control system and internal audit). The audit approach is based on a risk analysis and stretches from the organisational structure to the performance of audits and quality assurance.

The quality assessment (QA) is particularly important in conjunction with Section 107 (3) sentence 2 of the German Stock Corporation Act (AktG). According to this, the supervisory board or audit committee must primarily concern themselves with the effectiveness of the internal audit system. A QA with a positive result therefore indicates that the internal audit system is effective. Since the internal audit must assess the effectiveness of the risk management system as well as the internal control system, it can serve the supervisory body as a monitoring tool for these areas. However, this requires the internal audit system to be effective.

Your demand: You want to know whether

• your internal audit complies with the DIIR/IIA quality standards and the internal guidelines for service provision, and whether it implements them appropriately,
• your audit capacities are being used economically beyond these compliance and effectiveness requirements, 
• there is further potential to increase the efficiency of your internal auditing projects.

Phase 1: Is your IA functional? In the first phase, we assess the structural and procedural organisation of your internal audit. We analyse whether it is appropriate and functional and thus test its effectiveness. To do this, we work through the eighty quality criteria defined in the German Institute of Internal Auditors (DIIR) QA guidelines in eleven fields of observation.

Phase 2: Is your IA efficient? In addition to the first phase, we can also assess the efficiency of the audit function on request. We base our analysis on benchmarks, e.g. the "GAIN Annual Benchmark Study" or the experience of quality assessors from other auditing projects.