AOB Announcement on Inspection and Registration Matters

2 April 2020

Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Financial Reporting of Public Interest Entities

Dear Managing Partner,

The Securities Commission Malaysia’s Audit Oversight Board (AOB) is cognisant of the difficulties faced by audit firms in light of the COVID-19 outbreak and the Movement Control Order (MCO) which is effective from 18 March 2020 to 14 April 2020. As such, to ease the challenges faced by your firm and facilitate planning, the AOB has decided on the following:

Inspection of firms will be deferred to commence only after 15 May 2020.
All submission of updates of the implementation and completion of your respective Firm’s remedial action plans for the quarter ending 31 March 2020 will be extended to be incorporated and submitted together with the updates for the quarter ending 30 June 2020.
Payment of registration fees which are due between 18 March 2020 to 30 June 2020 shall be extended to be made within 7 days from 1 July 2020. Please note that this notice supersedes the automatic communications via ARAS on payment deadline.

We would also like to take this opportunity to announce that, as requested, any future payments can be made online to the following account:

Account Name	:	Audit Oversight Board
Account No.	:	514329136304
Business Address	:	No.3 Persiaran Bukit Kiara Bukit Kiara 50490 Kuala Lumpur
Bank and Branch	:	Malayan Banking Bhd Bukit Damansara SSC Jalan Semantan 50490 Kuala Lumpur
Branch Code	:	27-64324
Reference Number	:	A1369 (in place of company registration number if required)

Kindly complete the attached form which is to be emailed together with a receipt of the online transfer to [email protected].

In addition to the above, the AOB would be deferring the implementation of the audit transparency reporting for certain firms that meet the stipulated criteria as contained in the AOB Alert dated 14 August 2019 by another year. Accordingly, the following changes have been effected to reflect this deferment:

The period of reporting for the first audit transparency report would be for fiscal year ending on or after 31 December 2020 (instead of 31 December 2019); and
The transitional provisions communicated on 14 August 2019 would be applicable for transparency reports issued by the audit firms in the year 2021.

Nevertheless, early adoption of the above transparency reporting requirements and issuance of the transparency report is encouraged.

The AOB hopes that the above measures will allow the affected firms to better focus their attention and resources to address the various audit challenges faced due to the COVID-19 outbreak. In this unprecedented time, audit firms are reminded to ensure continued adherence to relevant standards in order to uphold audit quality.

If you have any queries relating to the above, please email us at [email protected].