The shifting internal audit landscape

The Internal Audit landscape is being challenged by pressures on resources and growing demands to help improve overall business performance.

To help gauge these shifts, and to gain insight into future and leading trends, we conducted a survey of Internal Audit executives worldwide.

The results indicate that Internal Audit is in the middle of an evolutionary transition, facing great challenges, as well as new opportunities. Internal Audit functions that can take advantage of these opportunities will thrive in the future.

Some key findings:

• Stakeholders have greater expectations, focusing more on enterprise-wide risk assessment and business and operational risk.
• Recruiting and retaining people with the right skills to meet Internal Audit’s expanding remit is the biggest challenge, particularly in IT, fraud, and business and operational risk.
• Implementing enterprise-wide risk assessments provides an opportunity to improve co-operation with other risk management groups across the company.

Download "Global internal audit survey: a current state analysis with insights into future trends and leading practices" (pdf, 1mb).