ICAI to establish Centre for Audit Quality

NEW DELHI: The profession of accountancy and auditing throughout the world is regulated and licenses are granted by the Regulator/sovereign to the auditors to ensure probity in financial statements. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) is a statutory body set up in 1949 by an Act of Parliament to regulate the Profession of Chartered Accountancy in India.

In India, ICAI over the years has reinforced the role that the accountancy profession plays in providing high quality financial information, facilitating market discipline, and fostering confidence of various stakeholders by being a prudential Regulator. ICAI has been focusing on the intrinsic quality of Chartered Accountants through strong regimen of quality education & internationally benchmarked training, continuous professional development of members in niche & emerging areas. It has also been improving Quality of Financial Reporting and Assurance functions through strong framework of standard setting and enforcement.

Purpose of an independent audit is to provide confidence to the users of audited financial statements in the quality of financial reports, in particular their reliability. Improving audit quality and the consistency of audit execution is essential to maintain confidence in the independent assurance, provided by the auditors. There is no set definition of a quality audit, and many factors influence audit quality. As a result, judging audit quality can be challenging and subjective.

As a part of ICAI’S drive to continue to benchmark the accountancy profession against the best available global practices, we have already converged to global standards on disclosure and assurance while keeping Indian interests in high stead.

In a recent major decision, the Institute has decided to open Centre for Audit Quality at ICAI’S Centre of Excellence, Jaipur which would enable the Institute to make available conducive environment for research and develop a systematic audit quality framework.