Co-sourcing or outsourcing internal audit work can reduce costs, free up capital, and enhance your ability to focus on what you do best. It can also provide you with the ability to tap into specific skill sets, industry knowledge and global resources on an 'as needed' basis.

With organizations being driven to do more with less, the internal audit (IA) function has become a prime candidate for strategic sourcing. This can include outsourcing the entire function or just certain critical elements. Like many other functions, IA has become highly sophisticated and virtually a business in itself. Achieving effective IA capabilities requires a significant level of investment in skilled resources, methods, training and technical infrastructure.

How we can help

By outsourcing your internal audit function, you can:

• Convert fixed costs to variable costs
• Gain access to highly skilled and experienced professionals
• Leverage effective knowledge sharing and thought leadership
• Obtain a fresh perspective and an added level of scrutiny
• Eliminate internal audit training and recruiting costs
• Enjoy greater staffing flexibility, especially as special projects arise

Through co-sourcing, KPMG's professional can complement your internal audit staff. We help you:

• Manage specific areas of your internal audit program
• Launch new projects
• Improve the effectiveness of your internal audit function

Internal Audit Professional Assistance

When your organization needs professional resources, KPMG can augment your organization’s internal audit function by providing you the experienced professionals with in-depth industry knowledge and specialized capabilities. Our professionals can help you through all the phases of Internal Audit as illustrated below:

Quality Assurance Review (QAR)

New demands from management boards, senior organizational leaders and regulators, are requiring the internal audit function to refocus efforts beyond regulatory compliance issues. Many leaders recognize the need for internal audit to play an expanded role — one that builds on its historic focus on value preservation (a control focus) to encompass activities related to value creation (a performance focus). Such a shift could enable internal audit — with the objectivity of its perspective and the rigor of its processes — to add value to the business in new ways.

We use our proprietary methodology, QAR, to help organizations achieve the following objectives:

• Establish a state-of-the-art internal audit function that delivers value to the organization
• Assess the strategic value of their existing internal audit functions
• Transform, realign and/or reposition their internal audit functions

QAR goes beyond the traditional quality assurance compliance review to identify high-impact improvement opportunities. Specifically, QAR focuses on internal audit's three key success factors:

• People
  Does internal audit have
  the right "people strategy" to achieve the objectives as defined by
  your management?
• Processes
  Are your internal audit's processes efficient, effective and aligned with the organization’s strategy?
• Positioning
  Is internal audit viewed as a valued contributor to your business strategy and performance?

Control Self-Assessment (CSA)

CSA is the one of the enhanced risk management tools recommended by the Audit Committee Guidance Committee (ACGC) Guidelines. In the recent regulators' push for audit committees to give an opinion on the state of internal controls and risk management systems of the organization, CSA is one of the effective tools that can provide the Board and the audit committee with a sustainable and defensible platform in developing an informed opinion.

We offer concepts and pragmatic approaches to CSA and we will work with you to tailor an approach that best deploys CSA in your organisation.