On May 31, the Monitoring Group, comprised of a number of international regulatory bodies, published a summary of feedback based on comments received from 179 responders to Strengthening the Governance and Oversight of the International Audit-Related Standard-Setting Boards in the Public Interest. According to its summary the following received strong support across all stakeholder groups (e.g. national standard-setters, professional organizations, financial statement users, regulators, audit firms, and academics):
- need for strong accountability and transparency
- importance of maintaining a principles-based approach to standards
- diversification of the standard-setting board (multi-stakeholder approach)
- ethics standard-setting for auditors and professional accountants by a single board (as today)
- expansion of the boards' technical staff
- broadening of the funding base
Also, many stakeholder groups supported:
- more timely standard-setting (while maintaining high quality)
- more strategic approach by standard-setting boards
- changes to the nomination process
- exploring the role and membership of the Consultative Advisory Group, which is not clearly understood by stakeholders
- remuneration for standard-setting board members
Views were "diverse" on the following matters:
- the need for changing the model (stakeholders did not believe the Monitoring Group stated its rationale clearly enough)
- combining the auditing and ethics standard-setting boards into a single board
- composition of the boards (balance of stakeholders)
- whether standards should be scaled for smaller entities
The Monitoring Group will continue to gather stakeholder feedback via public roundtables and other outreach before publishing its reform recommendations.
