Auditors will be written off the term – Newspaper Kommersant No. 240 (7441) dated 12/26/2022

The self-regulatory organization of auditors (SRO) Sodruzhestvo proposes to make the qualification certificate indefinite, now it is canceled in the event of a break in work for three or more years. Market participants recognize that this will help attract new employees and save on the return of old ones. However, they warn about the risks of developing a “comfort audit”.

SRO “Sodruzhestvo” within the framework of the “concept for the development of audit activity” began to collect the opinion of the market on the exclusion from the law “On Auditing” of the rule according to which the auditor loses his qualification certificate if he did not participate in the provision of audit services for three years in a row. The collection of opinions will continue until the end of the year. If a positive decision is made, the Ministry of Finance initiates a corresponding draft law.

As the Kommersant poll showed, auditors are in favor of abolishing the norm.

Vladislav Karastelin, managing partner of Dokar Consulting, notes that it is discriminatory. “You will not revoke the right to drive a car if their owner does not have his own car or has not driven for more than three years,” the expert emphasizes. All certified auditors annually undergo professional training and testing, and a positive test is a sufficient basis for confirming qualifications, Mr. Krastelin believes.

Employees of audit firms leave for related areas, in particular, become specialists in preparing reports or financial directors, while their work in terms of preparing reports under IFRS and RAS is similar to auditing, adds Igor Tokarev, senior managing partner at Business Solutions and Technologies .

Auditors believe that the abolition of the norm will help to cope with staff shortages.

For the market to work effectively, a constant influx of university graduates is needed, and the opportunity to keep a certificate when moving to the real sector will provide an additional incentive for junior specialists, since now they are not sure that they will remain in the profession for life, and they doubt why take the exam, if it is now in demand only “without a break in the audit experience,” explains the general director of Rusaudit Evgeny Samoilov. He clarifies that the profession is aging, the imbalance is growing: auditors under 45 are mostly in large companies.

According to the Ministry of Finance, in 2019 the number of auditors was about 20 thousand people, and in 2021 – 17 thousand. Now, judging by the SRO data, we are talking about 16 thousand specialists. Last year, only 14 applicants successfully passed the exam (see “Kommersant” dated August 16).

In addition, market participants hope to save on exams.

The general director of the auditing company Univers-Audit, Dmitry Limarenko, explains that if an auditor wants to return to the profession after the withdrawal of the certificate, he is forced to take the exam again, most likely, the company that invites to work will pay for it.

According to Yevgeny Samoilov, now passing exams for an auditor’s certificate is “a very expensive and lengthy task.” The participation of an employee in the exam can cost the company 300-400 thousand rubles. for the applicant, since only one attempt costs about 180 thousand rubles. And not everyone gets it right the first time. The direct costs are added to the time of study holidays, which must be given during the preparation and passing of the test, so the above costs are an increase of up to 50% of the base price of a specialist per year, Mr. Tokarev adds.

At the same time, there are also negative sides to waiving the validity period of certificates, experts and market participants admit. According to Igor Buyan, a partner in the practice of audit services of the B1 group of companies, a perpetual certificate “creates the ground for the development of a comfortable audit.” Firms that “provide audit services in bad faith,” he explains, invite people to simply be on the staff in order to meet the requirements for the number of employees to enter the SRO, while the person does not actually participate in the audits.

Julia Poslavskaya