South Africa Transparency Report 2020

Building trust in the capital markets.

SA Transparency Report 2020

Sharing insight into our rigour around our organisational leadership and audit management practices and controls.

Download the Report

Introduction

We call on all our stakeholders, from our clients to their investors to the regulators, to engage with this report and to continue their lively engagement with our teams on any and all matters covered.

Ours is an organisation that serves the public interest, and the work we do is integral to maintaining trust in the resilience of capital markets. As such, the EY South Africa Transparency Report is a key priority on our annual business calendar. We compile the report to share insight into our rigour around the leadership and management practices throughout our organisation with a core focus on our audit practice.

COVID-19 instantaneously transformed the way in which we needed to work, to serve our business, clients and our many societal stakeholders. On 17 March 2020, we were able to switch on EY operations from home after migrating our entire Africa-wide firm, consisting of 262 partners and 5500 employees to home-based, remote working. We were able to do this over a three-day period thanks to the investments we’ve made, since 2013, into the technology that supports our ‘EY@Work’ programme – a programme built to enable the very remote working we had to so hastily adapt to.

Our continued investment in Digital Audit and data analytics tools and technologies meant that our audit teams were able to seamlessly continue serving our audit clients remotely during the initial lockdown and beyond. You can read more about our Digital Audit innovation in the body of the report. 

Ajen Sita

CEO View: Transformation of the audit profession

Lindie Engelbrecht, EY Africa Regulatory and Public Policy Leader in conversation with Ajen Sita, EY Africa CEO on the transformation of the audit profession.

 

Watch now 

"We continue to engage actively with our local audit regulator, the IRBA and their inspection process plays a key role in determining areas of improvement. We benefit from inspections, and implement remedial actions to address all regulatory findings. All regulatory findings receive the highest leadership attention and swift responses."

Stephen Ntsoane

EY Africa Assurance Leader

This year’s report speaks to our EY values and how we as a business create value for our people, our clients, and society at large. The Report focuses on audit quality and Audit Quality Indicators (AQI’s) and covers the EY Network; Legal Structure and Ownership; Governance Structure; Risk Management; Ethics and Independence; Client Management: Association, Long Rotation, Acceptance and Continuance before moving to the broader organizational topics such as Talent Management and Transformation; Culture, Corporate Social Responsibility and Revenue and Remuneration.

External inspections each year

500

Across all member firms, EY audits 150,000 entities annually and based on evidence from over 500 external inspections each year, we have among the lowest rates of audit deficiencies in our peer group.