UK: FRC report - Developments in Audit

The Financial Reporting Council has published the latest edition of its annual report Developments in Audit: see here (pdf). The tone of the report is set by the opening line of the executive summary: "Audits are not consistently reaching the necessary, high standards required to provide confidence in financial reporting". The most frequent issue raised by the FRC as part of its audit inspection work concerns the sufficiency of the auditors' challenge of management; the FRC states that firms need to increase urgently their efforts to understand why audit partners and their teams continue to underperform in this area.