Internal Control, Financial Oversight and Risk Management

The importance of internal control, the role of auditors and audit committee Financial oversight is integral and indispensable to good governance. Robust financial oversight is essential for a company to remain financial healthy. Though the shareholders have delegated control to the board, they should regularly keep a watch on the company and its financials. For this purpose, they appoint auditors who examine the financial reports of the company and appraise them on its fair representativeness. Directors and auditors are responsible for establishing strong internal controls. Weak internal control saw Barings Bank, Britain’s oldest merchant bank and Queen Elizabeth’s personal bank collapse. Given the reliance of information technology (IT) in business, strong IT governance can prevent fraud such as witnessed in Punjab National Bank. Reliability of financial statements is a function of internal control, accounting standards, audit, CEO and CFO and audit committee oversight. The Enron Case demonstrates the pitfalls of accounting irregularities and the role of each stakeholder—directors, auditors, chairperson, CEO, CFO, regulators, analyst and even employees in the scam—signifying how each participant has a role to play in ensuring good governance and in prevention of fraud. The failure of auditors in preventing or even detecting the accounting frauds and in some cases even perpetuating the fraud has raised concerns of auditors’ objectivity and audit effectiveness. Several measures can be taken to enhance audit effectiveness including independent oversight body, effective audit standards, unbiased selection procedure, rotation of auditors, restrictions on non-audit services and adequate remuneration. Audit committee is one of the main pillars of the corporate governance mechanism in any company. The audit committee is responsible for oversight of financial reporting and disclosure, reliability of the company’s internal control processes and a strong risk management system.