All Internal Controls articles – Page 5
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Article
Heightened scrutiny, increased documentation & a harsh new normal for internal controls
As auditors require more information from companies, and companies push back against what they feel are excessive demands for details, a consensus that works for everybody remains elusive. Tammy Whitehouse has more.
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Blog
Lax controls—a cancer at one bank
Bill Winters, CEO of the U.K. bank Standard Chartered may have set a new precedent for taking a hard stance on ethics and compliance recently, when he penned an angry memo to 1,500 top managers announcing steps he has taken to “stamp out the cancer of complacency and lax controls” ...
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Article
LendingClub could teach Theranos a thing or two about crisis management
Relatively young, technology-based companies face special difficulties when dealing with crises. Their focus on market disruption and their lack of established credibility make earning public trust even more difficult. And yet, LendingClub shows how it can be done at a time when Theranos certainly failed the crisis management test. David ...
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Article
Don’t go it alone: working with other functions
During a panel discussion at Compliance Week 2016, ethics and compliance officers came together to discuss both the challenges and opportunities associated with working with other functions and how to minimize turf wars and silos while enhancing the compliance program. Jaclyn Jaeger reports.
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Blog
More time, cost required in 2015 to comply with SOX, survey says
A majority of the 1,500 companies polled by Protiviti said the number of hours they devoted internally to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in 2015 increased by more than 10 percent. Tammy Whitehouse has more study results inside.
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Blog
Study asserts companies shop for internal control audit opinions
Audit opinion shopping—a not-uncommon practice believed to have been cut down in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley era—remains live and well in capital markets, and it’s most pervasive in the presence of competition among auditors, according to research from the American Accounting Association. More from Tammy Whitehouse.
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Blog
PCAOB previews improvements from 2015 inspection cycle
A staff inspection brief issued this month by the PCAOB showed that preliminary counts from inspections performed in 2015 suggest the number of audit deficiencies for the largest firms has fallen, while deficiencies at smaller firms is, overall, high. The PCAOB brief stated that inspectors observed “indications of improved audit ...
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BlogFRC: What investors should expect in company records
Stephen Haddrill, chief executive of the U.K.’s Financial Reporting Council, wrote a letter to investors highlighting recent changes to companies’ annual reports and advising investors on what to expect in the coming crop. The report is “intended to be an important source of forward-looking information about strategy and risk,” he ...
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ArticleSEC fines energy company $300K over rubber stamp internal controls
Image: A recent SEC action against a company for maintaining insufficient internal controls signals a new effort from federal authorities to hold companies to higher standards when it comes to internal control material weaknesses and significant deficiencies. “This is a case that doesn’t have a punchline,” says Tom Sporkin, a ...
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Article
Valeant’s financial restatement begs compliance questions
Valeant Pharmaceuticals’ announced financial restatement raises questions about the drug company’s compliance program and its business model. But it might also serve as an early warning to all publicly listed U.S. companies about the increased room for misjudging the booking of sales once FASB rolls out its new revenue recognition ...
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Blog
SEC Charges Magnum Hunter with faulty evaluations of internal controls
Oil and gas producer Magnum Hunter Resources and several individuals settled charges this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission for deficient evaluation of the company’s internal controls over financial reporting, and failures to maintain internal control over financial reporting.
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Article
Evolving your identity management program: Six cautionary considerations
For compliance professionals in regulated industries, there’s perhaps no greater challenge than identity management. Call it a program, a best practice or simply a daily struggle to account for all users and all the systems to which they have access—identity management is a beast that is tough to tame.
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Blog
The compliance program as an internal control
Do compliance programs make a difference? Post-mortem reviews of compliance failures typically raise the question as to whether the cause of the failure is due to a rogue bad actor or a failure in controls. It may be both; a lack of compliance controls allowed or even enabled the rogue ...
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Blog
Chariots of Fire
Hoverboards were this holiday season’s must-have present, but ongoing product safety concerns, patent infringement lawsuits, and even a regulator raid at a prominent electronics industry tradeshow all point to a product category that has been rushed to market in more ways than one, constituting a compliance failure that is as ...
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Article
Regulators Suggest It’s Time to Double Down on Internal Controls
Image: After nearly a year of moderating corporate gripes of excessive auditing driven by regulatory inspections, regulators say the answer is for companies to double down on their controls and use a little more muscle with their auditors. “Preparers are on the back end of the compliance funnel,” said Kevin ...
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Blog
Regulators Continue Full Throttle on Internal Controls
Image: SEC Chief Accountant Jim Schnurr is encouraging preparers to communicate more with auditors and consider that tensions might be escalating because their controls aren’t up to snuff. “The ICFR issues identified by the PCAOB may not be just a problem of audit execution,” Schnurr said. “Rather, they may, at ...
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Article
Achieving a Unified View of Financial Crime Risk
Increased regulatory scrutiny and the sting of billions in fines and penalties resulting from misconduct have prompted many financial firms to pour money into their compliance programs—investments that may be in vain without a unified view of risk. The tech challenges to build that view are considerable, but not impossible ...
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Blog
PCAOB Explores Tension Over Internal Control Audits
Image: The PCAOB apparently is taking seriously complaints that its inspection process is driving unnecessary audit work. At a recent conference, PCAOB member Jay Hanson said the board has studied its inspection process to assure that inspections are not imposing new audit requirements. Still, he said, “we cannot rule out” ...
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Article
Global Investigations in the Modern Era
“Europe” may be a nice short-hand for discussions about global business, but in reality is still 28 individual nations, each with their own laws and customs. Little surprise, then, that in several discussions about internal investigations at the Compliance Week Europe conference, the subject got complicated quickly. We have the ...
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Blog
SEC Expects Year-End Disclosures on Revenue Rule Plans
Image: SEC Chief Accountant Jim Schnurr has advised audit committees to get involved in overseeing implementation of the new revenue standard, which takes effect in 2018. Schnurr said that should include disclosures about how the standard will affect financial statements. “We expect the level of these disclosures to increase and ...