Have you got enough resources for your assurance report?
Organisations are getting busier with client work, regulatory requirements and maintaining good governance. Team members’ time is the limited resource that we are all trying to manage as effectively as possible.
When conducting an assurance project, multiple key team members in an organisation can be affected by having time and resources tied up to provide evidence through documentation, walkthrough testing, and answering follow-up and investigation queries.
In addition, there can often be a significant outlay of management time to organise the logistics of the project, all while trying to do the day-to-day tasks that still need to be completed.
Service Auditor’s should be working together with organisations to set clear project plans while creating realistic target dates for all, as well as helping to manage people’s time and resources.
Assurance projects can be delivered on time with minimal disruption to an organisation by following clear stages of assurance methodology:
- Kick off and planning
- Fieldwork
- Reporting and review
Strong communication is important throughout the assurance project to keep information flowing between the Service Auditor and organisation.
Progress update calls with key team members can get control activities signed off in a timely manner as follow-up and investigation queries can be discussed and answered as they arise – spreading out an organisations resource requirement and limiting the pressure of time restraints on team members.
At Assure UK we have project management tools which help our clients use their limited resources as effectively as possible while following an agreed timetable. We strive to add value to the assurance reporting process by providing business insight, improvement findings and sharing knowledge from working with others in the pension industry.
If you want to find out more about Pension Administration Assurance reports AAF 01/20, Master Trust Governance AAF 05/20 reports or Sole Trustee AAF 02/07 reports please get in touch with us at info@assureuk.co.uk – alternatively you can call us on 020 7112 7300.