As the UK Competent Authority, the FRC delegates tasks to ICAEW including audit monitoring of non-PIE audits and non-PIE audit firms. The FRC Professional Oversight team conducts an ongoing review of our performance of these delegated tasks. Every year a small number of our audit monitoring visits are shadowed by inspectors from the Professional Oversight team.
An FRC inspector will join the QAD reviewer(s) at your office, sit in on meetings and will also choose at least one of the audit files QAD selects to review themselves. ICAEW and the Audit Registration Committee retain sole responsibility for your audit monitoring visit, and the FRC does not influence the conclusions or outcome.
If your visit is selected, we aim to give you as much notice as possible but may only have confirmation of the shadowing 1-2 weeks beforehand. We appreciate firms’ co-operation in facilitating these shadowed visits, which normally includes providing more space and an additional laptop for the FRC inspector to access audit files.
If you have any questions about your visit, please contact qadvisits@icaew.com
A message from the FRC about its oversight of ICAEW audit monitoring work
The FRC would like to remind firms that as the UK Competent Authority of statutory audit, the FRC remains responsible for the tasks delegated to Recognised Supervisory Bodies (RSBs) under the Delegation Agreements and Regulation 3(4) of SATCAR. Schedule 2 of SATCAR provides powers for the UK Competent Authority to request information from a statutory auditor for any purpose related to inspecting or investigating statutory audit work. There is no provision that says that the FRC loses these powers if it has delegated any functions to RSBs. There is no requirement for the FRC to reclaim a task to exercise this power. Therefore, the FRC is entitled to ask audit firms for any information or access to information if it is considered necessary for inspecting or investigating statutory audit work even though the audit monitoring work is carried out by ICAEW.