We identify and assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to fraud or error, and then design and perform audit procedures responsive to those risks, including obtaining audit evidence that is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.
In identifying and assessing the risks of material misstatement in respect of irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations, we considered the following:
- the nature of the industry and sector, control environment and business performance;
- results of our enquiries of management about their own identification and assessment of the risks of irregularities; and
- discussed any matters we identified having obtained and reviewed the company's documentation of their policies and procedures relating to:
- identifying, evaluating and complying with laws and regulations and whether they were aware of any instances of non-compliance;
- detecting and responding to the risks of fraud and whether they have knowledge of any actual, suspected or alleged fraud; and
- the internal controls established to mitigate risks of fraud or non-compliance with laws and regulations.
To address the risk of fraud through management bias and override of controls, we:
- performed analytical procedures to identify any unusual or unexpected relationships;
- tested journal entries to identify unusual transactions;
- assessed whether judgements and assumptions made in determining the accounting estimates were indicative of potential bias; and
- investigated the rational behind significant or unusual transactions.
In response to the risks of irregularities and non-compliance with laws and regulations, we designed procedures which include, but were not limited to:
- agreeing financial statement disclosures to underlying supporting documentation;
- enquiring of management as to actual and potential litigation and claims; and
- reviewing correspondence with HMRC or any other relevant regulators.
There are inherent limitations in our audit procedures described above. The more removed that laws and regulations are from financial transactions, the less likely it is that we would become aware of non-compliance. Auditing standards also limit the audit procedures required to identify non-compliance with laws and regulations to enquiry of the directors and other management and the inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any material misstatement that arise due to fraud can be harder to detect than those that arise from error as they may involve deliberate concealment or collusion.