It was against this background that the KPMG’s Global Audit Committee conducted a survey on the challenges audit committees and their boards face in today’s complex business environment and future months. The survey generated much interest and captured the views of 1,800 audit committee members worldwide who commented on a range of issues.
The KPMG’s Audit Committee priorities document envisions that the year 2013 will be one where audit committee members will encounter numerous challenges that require adequate insights of approaches to mitigate them. The most intriguing of the complexity of business environment is the fact that priorities and opportunities are not similar in all circumstances.
As a result, the KPMG’s Audit Committee survey provides a broad spectrum of priorities for 2013 by focusing on issues such as:
- Financial reporting and disclosures
- Audit quality
- Oversight of internal and external auditors
- Risk management and crisis readiness
- Emerging technologies
- Audit committee effectiveness
It is worth concluding that as directors take forward their companies to the challenging months ahead, the findings of our survey will serve as an important reference – for benchmarking current practices, identifying gaps and emerging risks, and igniting fresh debates on how audit committees and boards can strengthen their oversight and keep pace with the increasingly complex and fast-changing global environment.