ICAEW Practice Assurance Monitoring 2019
The ICAEW’s Quality Assurance Department (QAD) has issued “Piecing It All Together”, its review of its Practice Assurance monitoring activity during 2018.
QAD’s areas of focus in 2018 were, not surprisingly:
Compliance with the 2017 Money Laundering Regulations, which came into effect on 26 June 2017; and
Readiness for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect on 25 May 2018.
In addition to the above, QAD’s reviews covered a wide range of other areas, dependent upon the characteristics of the firms involved, including policies and procedures for dealing with gifts and hospitality at the larger firms.
In relation to anti-money laundering requirements, QAD found that many of the firms they reviewed had good procedures in place, although several common areas for improvement were identified, especially regarding the need for firms to keep their procedures up to date and ensuring that they cover all service lines.
On the GDPR front, many firms had done significant amounts of preparation for the new requirements, including data audits, training of staff and enhanced monitoring of compliance with the requirements. Again, however, there were several areas for improvement, including incomplete gap analysis following data audits, and a need for greater consideration of the handling of data obtained via the firm’s website.
In connection with gifts and hospitality, although most firms were found to adhere to the principle that gifts or hospitality must not be accepted or given if they could compromise integrity or improperly influence behaviour, in a number of cases there was a need for policies to be formalised and clearer guidance to be given by firms to their staff.
Across the 2,030 Practice Assurance reviews carried out by QAD during 2018, issues relating to anti-money laundering were by far the most common source of matters requiring action, which were found at 911 firms, with client money issues being next most frequent (315 firms), and data protection/IT matters coming third (291 firms).
The full report can be accessed at this link
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