Review risk assessment or miss the bus, auditors told

Global Internal Audit Association (IIA) President Richard Chambers has asked practitioners to re-invent their risk assessment roles to support the wellbeing of private or public sector agencies.

Speaking in Nairobi during a one-day symposium with chief internal auditors, Mr Chambers said the changing face of risks facing companies called for a change of the internal auditors role to include predictive and preventive tasks.

“In the past, internal auditors spent months perusing documents that helped them generate a report on an entity’s past performance. But today, internal auditors have access to information technology systems that help them generate useful data that can be used to chart a company’s path to continued success,” he said.

Mr Chambers observed that internal auditors must regularly engage management to help them in mitigation measures that make their companies more adaptive to emerging changes.