ABC Accountants financial audit support and partnership
Written by Ronald Teuthof
ABC accountants, part of ETL Nederland, has grown enormously in recent years and major expansions are also expected in the coming years. The lead partner has been confronted with a few challenging files in recent months and has asked BR1GHT for support in several areas. After a number of discussions, we have agreed on a collaboration in which BR1GHT will focus its services in the Netherlands and Suriname as a dedicated partner of ETL. This project description tells about our services to ETL.
Background information
Large accounting firms face ever-increasing demands for quality and increasing concerns about recruiting and retaining staff. With the new legislation regarding the mandatory control of ‘non-financial’ information, the work on their existing customers is only increasing. As a result, the big 4 can hardly take on any new clients and even must divest clients. This has led to quite a few smaller accountancy firms joining forces to accelerate their becoming part of a larger (international) whole to enable investments in quality. and take over the evicted customers of the big 4. ABC is such an organization and ETL the international partnership.
Services
BR1GHT has had several discussions with ETL to offer the following services:
- Support by means of specialists in the performance of compilation and audit activities.
- Setting up the (new) quality requirements in the context of ISQM-1 and ISQM-2.
- Implementing technology to support ISQM, as well as technology to implement audit procedures (Audit Management System).
- Forming the ETL consultancy organization based on the BR1GHT specialist areas, such as IT auditing, process controls (testing), process mining, data analytics and the improvement of internal control (governance, risk, compliance and internal audit).
BR1GHT has now started with a team of specialists from the Netherlands and Suriname to support the compilation practice. This is full co-sourcing, in which BR1GHT controls the pipeline of activities and assigns them to specialists in the Netherlands, with the support activities being delivered from the BR1GHT service center in Suriname based on a well-defined service catalogue. In addition, the first agreements are currently being made for other services, such as IT audits, ABC’s new AMS is being set up and preparations are being made to shape ISQM.
In the coming months we will supplement this project description with feedback from ABC about the first experiences with BR1GHT.