Change in norms on eligibility, empanelment and appointment of Statutory Branch Auditors in Public Sector Banks from the year 2020-21 and onwards.
Policy finalised by RBI, 2 major changes done as mentioned below, rest points remain same:
1.A. Norms for selection of branches of Public Sector Banks (PSBs) for Statutory Audit
i. Statutory branch audit of PSBs should be carried out so as to cover 90% of all funded and 90% of all non-funded credit exposures of a bank.
The selection of branches for statutory audit shall include a representative cross section of rural/semi urban/urban and metropolitan branches, predominantly including branches which are not subjected to concurrent audit. CPUs/LPUs/and other centralised hubs, by whatever nomenclature called, would be included for branch audit every year. The selection of branches shall be finalised by each PSB with the consent of their Statutory Central Auditor/s.
IMPACT
Removal of mandatory audit of 1/5 branch with advance size less than 20 cr
Policy point no 4. The concept of compulsory rest for two years for audit firms located in the specified centres, after completion of four years of continuous branch audit, followed till FY 2019-20 has been done away with.
Instead, the branch auditors across all the centres of the country, on completion of four years of continuous branch audit, will be subjected to the policy of rotation i.e. they may be considered for appointment as SBAs of any other PSB.
However, the audit firms will not be eligible to be re-appointed as SBAs, in the same bank where they completed their audit assignment prior to rest/rotation, at least for one cycle of four years.
IMPACT
Cooling concept removed now no cooling after end of 4 years in all cities.
Policy for Selection of Audit firm:
While allotting branches, banks are required to select auditors/audit firms which are in close proximity to their offices/branches. Banks are also required to have a suitable mix of various categories of auditors / audit firms while selecting the branch auditors keeping in view the size of the branches to be audited.
Banks are advised to allot branches, to the extent possible, to the audit firms taking into consideration their category and audit experience in such a way that specialised and larger branches are audited by bigger/experienced audit firms.
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From our experience, though we are not in the metro ciies, wherein cooling period is followed, our firm was left out after four years of audit of one particular PSB and we are not able to ascertain the reason for the same, in spite our letters to the concrened authorities. It is not known whether the RBI confirms that no CA Firm is lefft out from the list it sends to a particular Bank.
Further from the allotments made it is ascertained that there is no uniformity in the gross fees per CA/Partner because firm with more partners get very less fees per partner, whereas the individual CA gets more gross fees; some times even four time than a partner in a larger firm gets.