Thanks to Lexis Nexis for making my most recent article available from the current issue of Risk Management Today to my clients and readers.

The article reviews the latest benchmarking study from IIA and Protiviti of 160 heads of internal audit from around Australia and draws out three key themes of interest to those charged with oversight of internal audit and risk management.

Key points

• It is now the norm for internal audit to be independent from management. If you are not in line with the IIA’s Policy Agenda, you may be an outlier.  Given that these are simple mechanical mechanisms, we recommend benchmarking your function against these areas and taking action accordingly.
• Internal audit still struggles to demonstrate compliance with professional standards.  Given that these matters are relatively straight forward, organisations should insist that their internal audit functions and outsourced providers comply with the IIA’s International Professional Practices Framework.
• Quite rightly, strategic risk has entered the top 5 priorities for heads of internal audit, however the reality is that capabilities in this area are embryonic at best. Organisations should assess whether have this capability in-house, and if not take steps to develop it, or periodically engage professional assistance to fill this gap. The first step is to understand what strategic risk is, and this article takes some initial steps towards defining this.

Please feel free to download the article and pass it on. (Download, pdf, 3 pages, 113kB)

For more information on this publication can be found here.

Todd

Related links

Strategic risk and emerging risk capability assessment

After two years working with the Institute of Internal Auditors as their national Technical and Policy Director in Australia, I’ve had a lot of inquiries on why I was moving on, and what’s next.

Risk Magazine Magazine (Australia) published an interview with me this week – Davies Leaves on a High - which covers this in the context of the IIA.

Given that articles can only contain so much, for those who are interested in the full story, our media statement gives a bit more insight into how the last two years of focused effort fits into a long term program of structural change for the the internal audit profession for the betterment of directors, boards, shareholders and the general public.  This is available for download at the link below.

Media Statement – Todd Davies departure from IIA (pdf , 336kB)

For more information, please feel free to contact me directly.

Todd Davies FCA CIA FIIA(Aust) MAICD
(02) 9043  1719

In the weeks following the launch of ISO 31000, Todd Davies interviewed Michael Parkinson, Chairman of IIA Australia’s Technical Committee on the new global risk standard – ISO 31000. This series of videos provide a brief overview of what ISO 31000 is, why it’s important, who should use it and the role of internal audit.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

This video has been provided by the IIA as part of their outreach program. For more information go to www.iia.org.au.