In honour of International Women’s Day 2023 and the UN Woman’s theme of DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality, we wanted to speak to some of the women here at Engine B and ask them about their experiences as women working in tech. This three-part series will explore some of the challenges women in tech face, ways in which we can strive to make change, as well as advice for other women considering careers in the technology industry.

Claire Lees, Programme Delivery Manager

How do you think men can be better allies to women in the workplace

I think that men could be better allies to women in the workplace by offering coaching and mentorship, including offering advice and time, sharing opportunities, and helping women take on a more active role on high-profile projects and in management opportunities.

Before Engine B you worked as a project manager in the Civil Infrastructure Industry, and now in tech, both traditionally male dominated fields. What advice do you have for women pursuing careers in typically male dominated industries?   

My main advice to other women pursuing a career in traditionally male dominated industries would be:

• Do not let the fact that you are pursuing a career in a male dominated industry be an obstacle in pursuing your dream career.
• Knowledge is power especially in a male dominated industry and so remember that the reason you have your job is because you have the education, skillset, and knowledge, regardless of your gender, to succeed.
• It can be challenging as a woman to speak up in a room full of men, especially if you are challenging their ideas or decisions, however my advice is to never be scared to voice your opinion, you’re there to be heard.

Can you talk about a woman who has inspired you at some point in your career? How was she influential for you, and what did she help you to achieve? 

I had the privilege of working with a Senior Project Manager, Penny Griffin who was a professional inspiration to me because she was a Subject Matter Expert in the Industry and advocate for equality in the workplace and offered to be my mentor. Penny was influential to me because she could captivate and engage an audience in a male dominated environment which emphasised to me that, regardless of gender, if you have the knowledge and skills within your industry, gender is not a factor and will not prevent you from succeeding and progressing in senior roles. Penny helped understand that women have a different perspective of the world than men, so by having the ability to speak your truth in meetings and challenge decisions and ideas, you’ll be respected by your peers, and they will value and welcome future challenges.

Emma Gray, Digital and Content Intern

International Women’s Day was first marked in 1911 – over 110 years ago. Why do you think the day is still relevant?

I personally look forward to the day when gender equality is such that it is not necessary to dedicate one day to women, unfortunately we’re not there yet. Yes, there have been many positive changes for women in lots of countries since 1911, however there are still lots of examples of how women are not yet treated as equal. For example, the gender pay gap is still a major issue, and even greater for women of colour. It would be ignorant to think that the positive changes that have been made benefit all of us equally. There are still millions of women around the world who have far fewer rights and opportunities than we do in the UK. For example, around the world 129 million girls are out of school, and despite data showing 1 in 3 women worldwide have experience physical or sexual violence at least once, there are still 46 countries where women do not have any legal protection against domestic abuse. IWD is a good reminder for women and men around the world that we must fight to change this. IWD is also relevant as it’s a chance to look back on the women who got us here, who campaigned and fought for us to have the rights that we have now and to remind ourselves that we, both men and women, must continue their efforts.

What are the most effective ways to counteract the negative stereotypes of feminism, especially in the workplace? 

Sadly, the word “feminism” is sometimes perceived as a controversial one, but I believe this is down to a key misunderstanding of what the word actually means. Feminism is the equality and equity of both men and women. That doesn’t mean we want to put women above men, but that we want balance. Feminism doesn’t even just apply to women, if you are a person who believes in equality of any kind then you believe in feminism. I think the best way to counteract the negative stereotypes would be to remind people of this, and the overall aim of it, which really is far more important than any label anyway. We all reap the benefits from an equal society, both men and women!

Which women inspire you the most? 

I feel most inspired by women I know, and I’m very lucky to have been surrounded by strong, independent women my whole life! Despite wanting to continue working, my grandmother (along with many women in Ireland up until the 1970s) was forced to give up her job when she got married due to The Marriage Bar in Ireland, so instead she put all her efforts into being a mother. She was very successful, and as a result raised five very strong, determined women who I’ve always been able to look up to and learn from, one of which is my wonderful mum who has always inspired me. Additionally, I’m constantly inspired by my fabulous friends who are great examples of women supporting women, and of course all of the brilliant, intelligent women that work here at Engine B, who continue to teach me so much!

The post Celebrate International Women’s Day with Engine B appeared first on Engine B.

In honour of International Women’s Day 2023 and the UN Woman’s theme of DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality, we wanted to speak to some of the women here at Engine B and ask them about their experiences as women working in tech. This three-part series will explore some of the challenges women in tech face, ways in which we can strive to make change, as well as advice for other women considering careers in the technology industry.

Franki Hackett, Head of Audit and Ethics

What do you think are some of the biggest issues women in tech/business are facing today? 

I don’t want to be too negative, because there are huge opportunities for women in tech, and tech companies, like all businesses, do better when they have gender balanced teams. But we can’t pretend there are no issues. One difficulty with tech particularly is women are less likely to have studied technology or tech-related subjects like maths or IT at higher levels. For some jobs that kind of study is of course an absolute must, but I see a lot of places hiring for jobs that I am absolutely qualified by experience to do (I’ve done all the responsibilities before!) but I would be screened out if I applied because they are demanding a degree in IT I don’t have. That immediately reduces the jobs available to a lot of women, especially career changers. Once you get past that, often as a woman in a tech firm you’ll be joining a male-dominated environment and it can be tiring being the only person in the room who isn’t a man. Not to mention that there is still sexism in many places, and an assumption that while women might make good UI designers, they don’t make great engineers, or data scientists, or leaders. Tech firms can often not be brilliant on things like parental leave either, especially smaller companies, which makes them less appealing to people with caring responsibilities, who are overwhelmingly more likely to be women.

Have you been, or witnessed any women you work with be treated differently solely because of gender?  If so, do you have any advice for women who have experienced this?

I’ve had jobs in a variety of fields, from charities to tech, to accounting, and I don’t think I’ve ever worked in an industry where you don’t sometimes see women being treated differently purely because of gender. I’ve heard procurement people asking a contracting organisation ‘how do you handle the nightmare that is maternity leave?’. I’ve seen (and experienced!) direct sexual harassment from colleagues and clients. I once started a job and within the first week had a manager explain to me that the reason the organisation had a significant promotion gender gap was because you couldn’t really do a senior job part time, and once women have a family they just didn’t really want to be at work. But then, women are treated differently because of gender out in the world, so why would we expect work to be different? That said, company culture does make a huge difference, and as a lot of tech companies are challenging other work norms there are real opportunities to build more egalitarian cultures.

What advice would you give to another woman wanting to begin a career in tech? 

My advice would be to go for it! There are so many roles, so many opportunities, and different things to do you will definitely find something to suit you. I know tech can have a bit of a sexist ‘bro’ culture image, but that’s just not representative of the entire industry. So many tech firms are flexibility-first, forward thinking, and trying to build a better culture from the inside out. Working in tech will give you the opportunity to develop all sorts of skills, even skills which don’t exist yet! And we need more women if we’re going to build tech that works for everyone. So, if you’re considering retraining or taking on a new challenge, I would thoroughly recommend it.

Margaret Lin, Junior Data Scientist

Why do you think diversity in the workplace is so important?

I think diversity is so important as it gives the company access to multiple different views. This is especially relevant to my field as we’re currently working on models related to natural language processing, and people with different backgrounds can often provide unique perspectives on how to process and analyse language data. More generally, I think when we’re able to engage with colleagues with different perspectives, skills and ideas, we can more successfully achieve our overall goals.

In the near future, what positive changes would you like to see take place for women in the workplace?

I think lots of great changes have been made for women in the workplace, but we still have a long way to go! Some of the positive changes I think should take place are:

• Provide support and mentorship for the women you work with to ensure they have equal access to opportunities; I think this could really help increase the number of women in senior positions. Equally, whether you’re a man or a woman, if you notice a colleague being treated unfairly, show support for them and say something!
• Encourage women to speak up. I think sometimes we tend to second guess ourselves, and encouragement can go a long way to help with this.
• Ensure all employees undergo periodic training.

Is there a woman who has positively impacted you in your career? What is one lesson she taught you?

Yes! Wendy, who I met during my postgraduate helped me a lot when I first entered the coding field. She was the one who was willing to repeatedly explain those complicated algorithms to me and encouraged me when I was stuck. One lesson I learnt from her was “no pain no gain” and that coding needs practice. She spent 5+ years being good at it and I’m so lucky to have known her when I started programming, she made the process far less painful and also made me want to keep improving myself.

The post Celebrate International Women’s Day with Engine B appeared first on Engine B.

In honour of International Women’s Day 2023 and the UN Woman’s theme of DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality, we wanted to speak to some of the women here at Engine B and ask them about their experiences as women working in tech. This three-part series will explore some of the challenges women in tech face, ways in which we can strive to make change, as well as advice for other women considering careers in the technology industry.

Donne Burrows, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Do you feel that you have encountered obstacles in your career because of your gender, and if so, how did you overcome them?

No, I genuinely don’t think I have. I have typically worked in quite male dominated industries and luckily I have generally found my working environments to be supportive and not gender biased. That said, my advice if you do encounter this would be to find some allies – these could be men or women – and try to understand if this is just you or if others are experiencing the same. This will help you to work out how best to tackle it. I would definitely say don’t just accept it, try to tackle it and if you can’t, then it might not be the place for you to grow and develop, but don’t put up with it.

What positive measures does Engine B take to ensure equal opportunities at all levels?

We are really focused on diversity, in all its forms and fairness and transparency in all that we do. We are a virtual based team which allows people some extra time at the beginning and end of the day as people don’t need to travel to an office, and this helps people to manage the work/life balance. Additionally when we are recruiting externally, we actively ask for a mix of candidates to make sure we’re looking for the best people for the role regardless of gender. We also review our pay and reward on an annual basis with our HR advisers and externally benchmark to roles and experience to ensure equal pay.

What advice would you give to other women who are thinking of founding their own company or who want to be leaders?

Do it! I think as women we are sometimes guilty of worrying that we might not have all the skills and experience we need, and we may keep putting it off until we think we are ready. The reality is nobody does (men included!), but we all learn on the job and if every business founder waited until they thought they had all the skills they needed, the number of businesses founded would be far fewer, I’m sure. If you’ve got a good idea and the right support around you to be able to do it, I would say go for it. What have you got to lose?

Teddy Mihaylova, Program Delivery Manager

What pressures do you think women feel in the workplace that their male colleagues do not? 

I think men generally feel more comfortable sharing their ideas and being vocal in the workplace whereas many women have been socialised to be compliant and therefore we can often be seen as quieter and more obedient. There is also the stereotype that one gender is better at performing certain tasks then the other, leading many to assume that men are more suitable for leadership positions and that admin roles might be more appropriate for women, which I would argue isn’t true.

Do you think the Tech industry is doing enough to make progress towards gender equality 

I believe that the future for women in tech is bright and there will be more of us in the coming years. To ensure this, it’s so important for the industry to promote women pursuing careers in tech and to encourage their interest in the industry, especially as traditionally and statistically tech is seen as male-dominated field.

What is the most important message you want to send out to young women thinking about their careers? 

Believe in yourself and don’t be afraid to dream big! I think sometimes women tend to be more cautious and often will prefer to take the less risky road even if that means not reaching our career goals. As a young woman you should know that there is nothing impossible and you can be whoever you want to be as long as you keep trying. Don’t be afraid to take risks – you never know what will happen if you don’t try!

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The Engine B team will be on hand at stand 936 across the two days (11th – 12th May) bringing you live demonstrations of our data ingestion software, the EB Integration Engine, and answering any burning questions you may have. There’ll also be an opportunity to try the tool yourself.

With over 250 exhibitors to choose from, we know time is precious and selecting which stand to visit can be tricky. So, if you need more convincing, we’ve complied the top 5 reasons to visit Engine B at this year’s event:

1. LIVE DEMOS

Drop by for a live demo of our core data product, the EB Integration Engine. Not exciting enough? We’ll also be showcasing our groundbreaking knowledge graphs too!

2. HANDS ON TESTING

Get your hands on our tech and see for yourself how quick, easy and user friendly Engine B’s tools really are.

3. YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Not sure where our products fit into your workflow? Want to find out more about Engine B in general? Our team will be around to answer all your burning questions!

4. SNEAK A PEAK AT WHAT’S NEXT

Join us for an exclusive look at Engine B’s development roadmap so you can see what’s coming next, and when.

5. OUR SUPER TEAM!

We’re a friendly bunch. Why not tell us you’re attending ahead of time and let’s grab a coffee and chat!

Full details:

Stand 936 (opposite Sage)

Accountex London

11-12 May

ExCeL, London

Grab your free pass here

The post Top 5 reasons to visit Engine B at Accountex London appeared first on Engine B.

Last week, we announced the launch of our new data ingestion and standardisation tool, the EB Integration Engine. Our core data product simplifies data preparation for auditors, reducing the time taken to understand client data, improving audit quality, and speeding up fundamental audit tasks like reconciliation. The Integration Engine allows users to convert files quickly and securely into a common, easy-to-understand format by connecting to their client’s data through their finance team’s standard reports, via a download or by direct connection to their system through an API.

Addressing the audit data challenge

Audit firms rely heavily on client data for the audit process but accessing good quality, reliable data to use for analysis is a real challenge. The breadth and format of the data can differ widely, with huge inconsistencies in the output of different finance systems all of which makes data preparation expensive and time consuming.

The EB Integration Engine saves auditors huge amounts of time per audit, drastically cutting the time needed to prepare, format and sort data. By providing data in a consistent, standardised format, regardless of source system, the auditor is presented with all the information needed to do their job. Better quality data makes risks easier to identify and improves audit quality.

By paving the way for open and standard data access, the EB Integration Engine also enables greater innovation and competition across the audit industry.

Launch event at the ICAEW

To mark the launch of the EB Integration Engine, a small, selective audience of industry guests joined Engine B at the home of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) for a demonstration and drinks reception to celebrate the successful release of the product to market.

The evening included a welcome speech from CEO of the ICAEW, Michael Izza, who explained how the accounting body were working with Engine B to shape a more transparent, technology-enabled sector. Guests also enjoyed a full demonstration of the Integration Engine in action, showcasing how users can easily ingest and transform client data from a wide range of client finance systems into a standardised format, as well as a detailed overview of the Engine B development roadmap.

A huge thank you to everyone for attending, and to the ICAEW for hosting this very special event.

A milestone achievement

Shamus Rae, Founder and CEO, Engine B said: “The EB Integration Engine has the potential to be truly game changing for the audit industry as it provides the high quality, standard data needed to improve audit quality while saving time and money. Supporting firms in levelling-up the audit marketplace is very much in our company DNA and we are excited to see the positive, transformative impact this will have on the industry.”

To find out more about the Integration Engine, or to request a free video demonstration, please contact our sales team.

The post Product News: Engine B Launches New Data Ingestion Tool appeared first on Engine B.

For Engine B, 2021 has been a year of positive transition with the rapid expansion of our team bringing a wealth of new talent and expertise to the business. Over the course of the past year the company matured, and our technology continued to develop in line with ever-changing market needs and be tested by our clients.

And for the fintech community, 2021 was without a doubt another unforgettable year.  As expected, the acceleration of digital adoption continued and the world, now into its second year of the pandemic, looked to fintech companies to provide solutions to some of our greatest economic challenges and much needed assurance.

Now, with a new year before us, we look deep into our crystal ball and offer up Engine B’s top four fintech predictions for 2022. So, what’s in store for the sector this year?

1. Quality, quality, quality

Fintech companies who plan to sell to audit firms are soon going to find they are subject to stricter scrutiny as firms begin to implement the new International Standard on Quality Management 1. Some vendors will be taken by surprise by this new approach and will need to demonstrate how they contribute to quality methodology.

2. Green technology will be a focus

With Cop 26 behind us, we are going to see many more fintechs working to solve the climate crisis with technology. Audit technology has a crucial part to play in guaranteeing consistency and quality in financial reporting generally – especially where that reporting needs to account for environmental impacts – but it also demonstrates that audit tech can be better understood by auditors.

In 2022 we’ll come a step closer to realising the great opportunity we have with sustainability reporting and developing technology that ensures companies behave responsibly.

For more information on why sustainable audit matters, check out Engine B’s paper: Sustainable finance, ESG and Engine B

3. A more complete risk assessment using technology

We will see greater use of data analytics measuring risk to a business, as well as within it. The Covid pandemic has taught us that risk is something we need to prepare for as best we can and that the world had not thought through the data needs of a pandemic. Companies and governments need to look at all risks holistically and post Covid risk management will look different, pulling in multiple data feeds to inform sound, agile decision-making.

4. Mighty things from small beginnings grow

There will be a continuing democratisation of access to fintech. Access to financial services through apps has shown us that challenger organisations are the biggest drivers of technology uptake and this will continue into 2022 and beyond.

So, there you have it – our top four fintech predictions for 2022. Have we missed something? More to add? Why not join the conversation and let us know your predictions for the year ahead by leaving a comment on our LinkedIn post.

The post 2022: Engine B’s Top Four Fintech Predictions appeared first on Engine B.

The FRC’s future replacement, the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA), will be empowered to enforce audit standards and practices, including regarding the climate impacts of financial disclosures and non-financial reporting. As an industry-led solution, the FRC recommends that “most firms should develop ways to embed climate change considerations into their audit methodology and software to ensure that audit work is of a consistent quality.”

This raises the crucial role audit technology has to play in guaranteeing consistency and quality in financial reporting generally – especially where that reporting needs to account for environmental impacts – but it also indicates that audit tech can be better understood by auditors.

Digital transformation is not without its difficulties

However, the transition to a digitally enabled world has built in difficulty due to cultures, process, reporting and regulation all being created in a pre-digital environment.

The world of ESG reporting has an opportunity to define the data collection, regulation setting and assurance in a way that maximises technology to provide accurate, complete and timely data.

The current world of assuring financial reporting is full of frictions that overly relies on human intervention. This of course made sense in a pre-digital world. Regulations and how they are checked are overly dependent on humans who aren’t being deployed where they can best add value, but instead spend unnecessary time on transactional work.

ESG can break this cycle by defining the regulation in a way that allows codification where possible and human intervention where appropriate. This would allow for more efficient assurance and reduction in time, human effort and error coming from Corporate Reporting as the basis of the report can be digitally enabled.

The benefits and challenges of digitally-enabled reporting

The benefits of accurate data flowing directly from the corporate’s systems into digital filing include:

• Reduces down human interpretation that allows for errors or fraud to occur.
• Potentially allows for high frequency reporting and even always-on reporting.
• Leveraging 3^rd party data (including supply chain etc), then validation of a corporate’s data can be automated.
• An embedded system could also apply regulatory rules locally in the corporate’s environment and proactively ‘red-flag’ to management issues, as or before they arise.

Whilst the benefits of the approach are clear, there are four complexities that exist:

1. Data Spaghetti

The challenge: Corporates often have legacy systems where data is held and this is often a non-trivial ‘spaghetti’ scenario.

The solution: As the world moves on to the cloud this problem becomes easier to solve, however the problem exists today in the world of audit and has, to some extent, been solved by the creation of an Audit Common Data Model along with data orchestration technology mapping legacy systems to this model. An ESG extension to this approach will be needed and potentially additional operational systems will need to be included.

2. Single Source of Truth

The challenge: How do we know the system managing the single source of truth has not been tampered with?

The solution: Today’s world of audit sees the financial results being audited and to a lesser extent the underlying controls systems being reviewed. This needs to be turned on its head. Corporates need to install the software to create a single source of truth for ESG data, leveraging an open-source data model. It is this software, the way information gets into it (controls), and its access to underlying systems that needs to be independently audited.

3. Data Security

The challenge: Will corporates allow data to flow externally from their organisation other than strict regulatory reporting?

The solution: We need to minimise the data movement wherever possible. By keeping data within the corporate’s environment, we can ensure it is updated frequently from the core underlying systems and minimise the risk of leakage outside of the organisation. The solution will need to allow standard digital reporting but also allow for continuous assurance to be conducted within the corporate’s own environment – the assurance comes to the data, rather than the data leaving the corporate to go to the assurance organisation.

4. Third-Party Data

The challenge: How do we leverage different data sources both from within and outside of the corporate, including structured and unstructured data sets, to ensure the single source of truth aligns with evidence from the outside world?

The solution: By leveraging third-party data, we can increase the quality of the assurance by both checking the data for accuracy but also adding additional data to improve the scope of assurance. For example, supply chain data, weather data, heat map photos of manufacturing sites, comparisons with competitors on governance layers etc.

Re-inventing a legacy approach is not enough

The world needs to move fast to deliver accurate ESG reporting, and we cannot afford to simply re-invent a legacy approach copied from financial audit and accept the human frictions that come with that. ESG should be about digital reporting from the start and not about creating another industry with millions of people providing assurance using error prone human approaches.

Want to continue reading?

Check out our latest paper, ‘Sustainable Finance, ESG and Engine B’, to dive deeper into the role of the Audit Common Data Model in the context of ESG guidance.

The post ESG Reporting in the Digital Age appeared first on Engine B.

“What makes me happy is when ideas are heard. All of us have different life experiences which make us see things in different ways. It is really amazing when we have a chat about a new feature and everyone in the team looks at it from different angles and lenses. We respect our differences and hear each other out. That’s what great collaboration looks like!”

(Pierre Pauly, Lead Full Stack Developer)

“Having the opportunity to collaborate with my team so easily makes me happy at work, as you can share ideas and gain a deeper understanding or a different perspective on something. Working remotely has made it simple via Teams.”

(Lewis Jackson, Technology Intern)

“A sense of being useful, appreciated and purposeful.”

(Jaume Mora Pedros, Head of Product)

“Discovering new technologies and working with SOTA methodologies makes me happy. Oh and brainstorming ideas with colleagues!”

(Ioannis Efstathiou, Data Scientist)

“At Engine B, I am encouraged to create my own ideas and run with them, which I love. There is a sense of autonomy and trust; I am given the freedom to work in a way that suits me, and choice over when and where I choose to work. This level of trust is combined with a great level of support from both the leadership team and fellow colleagues – this makes me very happy!”

(Georgie Jones, Programme Executive)

“Collaborating with all those beautiful minds at Engine B and creating something truly valuable together. It makes me feel valued, gives me sense of achievement and puts a smile on my face.”

(Teodora Mihaylova, Programme Delivery Manager)

“Being part of an awesome start up where I feel valued and where I can genuinely have an impact while having a good laugh along the way.”

(Ryan Findlay, Full Stack Developer)

“The freedom of independent research, the fact we are using cutting edge technologies and the idea of no unreasonable limits.”

(Symeon Vasileiadis, Knowledge Engineer)

Want to hear more from the Engine B team? Connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Happiness at work week 2021 appeared first on Engine B.

About CAMFED

CAMFED is a pan-African movement, revolutionising how girls’ education is delivered. Through a gold-standard system of accountability to the young people and communities they serve, CAMFED has created a model that radically improves girls’ prospects of becoming independent, influential women. Their impact increases exponentially through the Association of young women educated with CAMFED’s support.

Having already supported more than 4.8 million children to go to school across Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, millions more students have benefited from an improved educational environment across their partner schools. Together with their supporters, they have multiplied the number of girls in school, and accelerated their transition to secure livelihoods and leadership.

Why is CAMFED important to Engine B?

Engine B belongs to a largely male-dominated industry and recognises the lack of women, particularly women of colour, working in STEM roles and leadership positions within the technology sector. It was therefore important to the team that the company chose to support a charity that champions the betterment of female education and opportunities.

In the same way that having a more gender diverse team benefits everyone, supporting girls’ education is mutual beneficial to all and is critical to inching ever-closer to gender equality. With better schooling, women can break out of a cycle of poverty, delay early marriage and parenthood, enjoy better job prospects, higher earnings and are more likely to participate in politics, further empowering other women. What’s more, this all positively impacts a country’s productivity and economic growth. This article by the Global Education Summit accurately explains why supporting female education makes smart economic sense.

How Engine B is supporting CAMFED

The team has come up with various creative fundraising ideas to support CAMFED in 2021.

Earlier this year, as we sat glued to our television screens eagerly awaiting the reveal of the infamous ‘H’ character in BBC’s hit police drama, ‘Line of Duty’, the Engine B’ers held a ‘Who is H?’ competition with all entry fees going to our charity. The competition was conducted ‘to the letter of the law’ and it provided a great outlet for many terrible ‘Line of Duty’ related puns.

This summer the team truly embraced the arrival of the Euros and joined in another Engine B sweepstake to follow the action. While the outcome wasn’t exactly what we’d all hoped for, we did however manage to raise more money for CAMFED and it helped us all feel a little better connected as we continued to work remotely, despite some Scottish and English rivalry in the early stages!

Next on our fundraising agenda will be the Royal Parks Half Marathon on Sunday 11^th October. Our runners will be racing through four of the eight Royal Parks in London – Hyde Park, The Green Park, St. James’s Park and Kensington Gardens. The event, originally scheduled for April, has been a great source of motivation for our team, especially during the Winter lockdowns. A big well done and good luck to all those involved!

Get involved

If you’d like to get involved in supporting girls’ education and Engine B’s fundraising efforts, there are numerous ways you can help:

1. Follow our team on social media or donate via our Royal Parks Just Giving page
2. Visit CAMFED’s website for a full list of resources
3. Check out this list of charities supporting female education by Impactful Ninja

The post Supporting CAMFED appeared first on Engine B.

Audit today

We must not dwell too much on what is wrong with audit today. However, having worked across multiple firms, it is clear nearly all firms spend a minimal time considering a business’s future prospects and limit the vast majority of attention and scrutiny to backward-looking and reactive audit. When problems arise, more people are thrown at the audits and more check lists are created. There is increasing need to sticky plaster the current processes whilst the opportunity to embrace a wider scope with next generation technology is broadly ignored.

“When problems arise, more people

are thrown at the audits and

more check lists are created.”

Today’s model is adequate, but it has not embraced the opportunity given to it by ‘big data’, changing societal needs of audit or the opportunity to increase assurance beyond financial data (i.e., ESG).

The reasons for this are far more complicated than simply laying the blame on the culture of partnerships, though that does give in-built cultural resistance. The key is to address multiple workstreams at the same time. At Engine B, we have identified what we think the main areas of focus should be, and categorised them into the following workstreams:

1. Refining the future vision of audit – This workstream is always ongoing as we continue to work closely with industry partners.
2. Data and Technology – Most of technology we need is available today, but it needs tailoring.
3. Research – Engine B works with academics and in-house research teams to develop AI and Graph technology.
4. Methodology – Engine B also works with IFAC, Mercia and others to agree on the digitisation of methodology but also influence broadening scope, like ESG.
5. Regulators – The role of the regulator will change but we cannot force that to happen. However, we can and continue to be transparent about our engagement with regulators such as the FCA and PCAOB.
6. Business Model Changes – As technology picks up more of the workload the business models will change and so will the way the service chain is insured.
7. Managing the ‘Pivot Points’ – The role of senior leadership in firms will be to manage several pivot points as we move to the new models. These pivot points include margin, liability (across the service chain), cultural inertia, regulations and skills.

Engine B’s vision for the future of audit

Our vision for the future of audit is not a static one and will constantly evolve as we continue to talk to firms, entities, regulators, associations, academics, other industries and owners of methodologies.

“Our vision for the future of audit

is not a static one”

The traditional view of the future of audit is to mention ‘always-on-audit’ and have a video of a ‘Siri-type’ character talking to an executive. Whilst fun, this doesn’t drive us forward at the level of detail we need. Technology and methodology must work in tandem to deliver a new future for audit. This should focus on leveraging technology to make the best of all of the information available, to provide assurance to anyone who needs it, on any subject and in real time.

A ‘Lens of Truth’

Engine B believes that we are moving to a world where, rather than a ‘single source of truth’, we have a ‘Lens of Truth’, enabling auditors to view details of different bank balances or currency, for example, at a very high level. Auditors can only confirm that accounts give a true and fair view if they have access to all the data which confirms or challenges the truth of the accounts.

It’s true that the concept of a ‘single source of truth’ has been around for some time, and we believe that this is directionally correct, but identify the following key differences:

1. We believe that data security requirements will only increase and therefore, we believe that data needs to stay in the data owner’s environment or as close to as possible, and a lens on to that data is provided. This needs distributed graph technology and, where required, app to data rather than data to app approaches.
2. Corporate Data cannot be a single source of truth without verification (assurance) and this needs to be done both by leveraging different data sources to cross check but also by a third-party assurance firm.
3. Digital reporting has already started to emerge in Banking and indirect taxes in certain countries. This will only accelerate. The current model of that reporting coming from data sources that are not assured or validated is not viable in the medium term.

Getting ready for tomorrow

At Engine B, we continue to refine and progress our vision for the future of audit as attitudes change, technology matures, and regulators’ expectations evolve. Engine B may only be in its second year of business but the friction points hampering the audit sector have been visible for a long time prior to its birth. The need for change is undeniable, but the profession must carefully navigate the next chapter of transformation to encompass all the seven workstreams, mentioned above. It is only through the combining of these areas of focus: refining the vision, integrating and developing technology, embedding research, adapting methodology and working together with regulators, that a concept like the ‘lens of truth’ can finally be realised.

Enjoyed this article? Read our Future of Audit paper for a more detailed insight.

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