EY - Audit Quality 2021

Our commitment to audit quality

A message from our leadership

We are pleased to present the 2021 audit quality report of Ernst & Young LLP (EY US or the Firm), which reaffirms our commitment to continuously improving the quality of our audits and strengthening our system of quality control. We invite you to read the highlights of the report presented below and to download the full report. 

Kelly J. Grier and John L. King

Audit quality: key focus areas

A snapshot of key metrics

Our commitment to audit quality key metrics 2021
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    Our audit portfolio

    We audit six of the top 10 companies in the Fortune 500 and have the leading market share among auditors of companies in the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 and Russell 3000.

    We audit 1,009 public companies.

    Our people

    10,935 US audit professionals, by rank, including 66% seniors and staff, 24% senior managers and managers, and 10% partners and managing directors.

    56% of our new US audit partners and managing directors are women and racially and ethnically diverse professionals.

    More than 190,000 hours of digital audit training completed in 2021.

    Executing high-quality audits

    18.8% of US public company audit hours are generated by EY US specialists, including 11.1% by IT, 5.4% by Tax, 1.3% by Valuation and 1.0% by other specialists.

    1:6 ratio of Quality Network and Professional Practice partners and managing directors to audit partners and managing directors.

    Our data-first approach

    95% of US public company teams are fully implementing our digital audit methodology.

    100% of US teams are using EY Canvas.

    Nearly 7,000 EY Helix data analyzers were delivered for US audits of 2020 financial statements.

Highlights of the report

Our commitment to the public interest

Our mission will always be to serve the public interest by performing high-quality audits. We continue to innovate and are using the lessons of the pandemic to reimagine how to deliver high-quality audits and serve the public interest in the future. 

Learn more about how we set a strong tone at the top, gain insights from our Independent Audit Quality Committee and continue to strengthen our system of quality control.

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Our people

Our people are critical to our ability to deliver high-quality audits, and we continue to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and developing transformative leaders who can help us realize our purpose of building a better working world.

Learn more about our new hybrid work model; actions we are taking to fight racism and promote social justice; and what we’re doing to attract, retain and develop our people. 

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Innovating and executing the audit

Our ability to analyze trends in full populations of data has transformed how we approach our audits, but our objectivity, professional skepticism and commitment to excellence remain at the core of everything we do.

Learn more about our data-first approach and find additional videos that explain our audit technology. 

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Supporting our teams

We provide coaching, guidance and consultations to help our professionals perform high-quality audits.  

Learn more about how our Quality Network and Professional Practice group support our teams and enable them to perform high-quality audits.

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Monitoring

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Monitoring the effectiveness of our actions and performing robust root cause analyses of positive and negative audit performance are key components of our system of quality control.

Learn more about our assessments of in-progress audits and our internal inspections of completed audits. 

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External inspections

Inspections by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) have led to improvements in audit quality, and we expect the PCAOB to focus on further improvements.

View our latest PCAOB inspection results, which show that our findings continue to decline. 

Download the report

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