The AOB’s oversight over auditors of PIEs and schedule funds are done through its registration, inspection and enforcement functions.
The AOB has registered and recognised 41 audit firms and 387 registered and recognised individual auditors.
The table below provides the breakdown of the number of PIE and schedule fund clients of these registered and recognised auditors.
Profile of audit firms | No. of audit firms | No. of individual auditors | No. of PIE audit client | % of total PLCs market capitalisation | No. of schedule fund audit clients | % of total NAV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Registered audit firms | ||||||
| Partnerships with 10 and more audit partners | 11 | 263 | 1,027 | 95.6% | 1,293 | 98.5% |
| Partnerships with 5 – 9 audit partners | 17 | 84 | 187 | 4.0% | 45 | 1.5% |
| Partnerships with fewer than 5 audit partners | 9 | 27 | 37 | 0.3% | 1 | - |
| Sub Total | 37 | 374 | 1,251 | 99.9% | 1,339 | 100% |
| Recognised foreign audit firms | 4 | 13 | 5 | 0.1 | - | - |
| TOTAL | 41 | 387 | 1,256 | 100% | 1,339 | 100.0% |
Source: The AOB
Chart 1 further depicts the number of audit firms and individual auditors registered with the AOB as well as the
number of PIEs audited for the last five years. The number of AOB-registered auditors has increased by 15.1% over
the years, a positive trend indicating continuous commitments by audit firms to build capacity.
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Currently, the four recognised audit firms are from Singapore, UK and Hong Kong. Recognised audit firms must be
an internationally affiliated network firm, with effective technical support and robust quality control from its network
firm. The AOB relies on the oversight frameworks of the recognised auditors’ home jurisdictions to determine whether
they are fit and proper to audit PIEs. Audit firms have to comply with international quality management, auditing,
ethical and other assurance standards. Further, they have to be subjected to regular inspection by their home audit
regulators.
