Audit Scheduling
Did they get an audit when they were supposed to?
As far as I am aware, there is no prescribed requirements for the monitoring and supervision of Advisers, particularly when it comes to the number of audits or the number of files per year. The industry average has been historically one audit per year, each containing three files. If there are problems perhaps those numbers increase. Whether or not this is appropriate is the decision of the compliance team. The question that must be asked however, is once the compliance team has decided on the audit program, the obvious follow on is, has that program been implemented effectively?
Obviously, compliance has been at the forefront of the financial services industry over the last couple of years. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent looking back on files and an industry has been created trying to find and compensate clients on a myriad of issues. To date, a lot of the focus has been on the large institutional licensees. One must ask the question however, how long until the smaller groups are targeted? …not very long I suspect. When we talk to Licensees it is fair to say that some very basic questions are sometimes uncomfortably difficult to answer… did they get an audit when they were supposed to?
Often this information is managed through an excel spreadsheet (or similar) and answering the questions “when did they have their last audit?” and “when is their next audit due” are not straight forward. Unfortunately, when managing compliance through a manual system, despite the very best of intentions, manual systems often fail. “It has been 18 months between audits for an AR” is not a good result.
RTC (Real Time Compliance) is an online platform created and developed by Business Health, that helps Licensees manage their ongoing monitoring and supervision. One of the many functions RTC delivers is a detailed record of every audit conducted, and very importantly, a date as to when the next audit is due. There is also a record in perpetuity as to when the last audit was conducted, by who and what that result was. It also comes with a dashboard that immediately tells the Administrator of any Adviser that has not had an audit for the last 12 calendar months or the last financial year. When combined with the RTC risk management matrix which allows for riskier AR’s to be audited more often, the chances of Advisers NOT getting the audit when they are supposed to drops dramatically.
So, when somebody asks the question “Did they get an audit when they were supposed to?”, the answer will be a resounding “YES”.
For your consideration,
Tony Stephens, Director
Business Health Pty Ltd
If you’d like to learn a little more about RTC you may contact Tony Stephens directly: tony@businesshealth.com.au.