The audit industry has faced a challenging time over the last decade and more. The onset of the global financial crisis led to the media, policymakers, and the general public questioning how audits were signed off for financial institutions that were implicated in the fallout.
More recently, there have been several high-profile cases of audit failure, both in Europe (the collapse of Wirecard in 2020) and in North America (the 2017 audit of Wells Fargo, which failed to identify millions of fraudulent customer accounts).
Many of these failures can now be mitigated by emerging technology that overcomes limitations from manually processing data and the risk of human error. The audit industry has an opportunity to modernize and rebuild trust. Incorporating new AI and automation tools can help ensure that the sector is fit for purpose for the next 100 years.
