NEXIM Bank Boss Canvasses Risk-based Auditing

James Emejo in Abuja

The Managing Director/Chief Executive, Nigeria Export-Import Bank (NEXIM), Mr. Abubakar Bello, has stressed the need for internal auditors to be more proactive in providing assurance over governance, risk and control.

Specifically, he said the adoption of agile principles in audit practice remained a trend which is currently sweeping across internal audit worldwide.

Bello, at the 49th quarterly general meeting of the Association of Chief Audit Executives of Banks in Nigeria (ACAEBIN), which was hosted by NEXIM Bank, however said many auditors were unsure of how to get started and as such, found it difficult to scale-up.

Speaking on, ‘Agile Auditing: The Future of Internal Audit,’ the NEXIM bank boss said there was a growing imperative for organisations to adopt more agile ways of working across functions and programmes to keep up with the huge competitive landscape and ever-increasing pace of change which hitherto poses a challenge to the internal audit function.

He said auditors must see it as an opportunity to deliver deeper insight into strategic business issues and risks, respond rapidly to changing priorities and emerging issues while becoming forward-looking in anticipating risks.

Bello further hinted that the era where the internal audit function was traditionally carried out using the waterfall model which tend to be more structured with defined stages and runs on a linear fashion was gone.

As such, he enjoined auditors to adopt a more collaborative and iterative approach to audit planning, scoping and delivery.
He noted that there was an increasing demand by stakeholders for a more efficient assurance, better advice on processes and controls, and greater risk anticipation, pointing out that this need had become intense due to impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses.

He also urged the audit profession not to see the word agile as a mere buzzword that connotes speed but should rather encompass what it truly means and applied into improving their audit processes and methodology to enable them to become valued stakeholders.