Financial Services Internal Audit: Planning Priorities 2024

It’s been another year of change, with geo-political and economic uncertainty adding further pressure to many businesses. For internal audit functions this can often mean working out how to do more with less, to cover an increasingly diverse range of topics and with growing stakeholder expectations and engagement. It is therefore important that the internal audit focus is on mitigating and managing the greatest risks.

The release of the draft Global Internal Audit Standards by the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) in early 2023 reflects the increasing expectations on internal audit as a profession, as well as how functions will benefit in the future from having a clear purpose. We suggest functions go one step further and ensure that their purpose is aligned to the purpose of the organisation as a whole; this is how internal audit can ensure it has the correct foundations in its approach to add true value to the organisation.

As ever, UK regulators have been busy, and Consumer Duty has dominated internal audit conversations across all Financial Services sectors this year. Focus on this will remain as organisations move into demonstrating how they achieve good customer outcomes, as well as addressing closed products in line with deadlines. Other reformative activity has been progressing across Solvency and Basel frameworks which we encourage functions to monitor closely. Another topic we’re frequently discussing is how firms are using Artificial Intelligence, and how internal audit can provide assurance around this.

As in previous years our priorities for 2024 are intended to provide a useful reference point from which to drive conversations and ultimately help define internal audit plans. For the first time, this year we have an entire section focused on Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) reflecting the increasing importance of topics falling under this overarching title and the need for functions to provide routine assurance in this area, to the extent that they aren’t already.

We hope you find the topics useful and if we can support you any further, please get in touch.