Accountancy Age publish interview discussing how AI and the digital revolution is impacting the audit profession
Accountancy Age recently published two articles concerning the AI tool transforming a Chartered Accountants audit offering, and how the future of the audit industry is benefitting from the use of this type of technology.
How the AI MindBridge software improves client audits
For three years, the Chartered Accountant Firm, has used the AI MindBridge software for its audits and during an interview with Accountancy Age their Partner shares how this software has improved the profession, the future of audit, and how close we are to real-time advisory. Becky Shields explained;
“Before, we would use old-fashioned random sampling techniques. So you’d have your population and we would just pick a random sample. Whereas what has changed is we put all of the transactional information in, and then it tells us what it deems to be the riskiest transactions and we sample those. It’s a targeted, focused sample. And obviously, that’s got to be better than the needle in the haystack approach.”
REGISTER HERE for MGI Worldwide’s AI Webinar in Partnership with MIndBridge.
7 November 2019 at 11 am Eastern, 8 am Pacific, 4 pm GMT
MGI Worldwide is working with Stuart Cobbe, business development consultant at MindBridge Ai on our next webinar which is taking place on 7 November 2019 at 11 am Eastern, 8 am Pacific, 4 pm GMT. He will be discussing this topic further, giving examples of how real financial institutions and CA firms have adopted AI technology and how analytics & AI are impacting the audit profession
How exactly does MindBridge work?
MindBridge looks for about 30 control points, which can be adapted for each client based on their habits. For example, one of the control points is weekend postings, but if a client works all weekend all the time, you can choose not to put much weight on this because for them, it’s normal. The software is, of course, looking for fraudulent transactions, but it can also highlight other issues within the firm – in the case of weekend working, for example, it could demonstrate that resources were stretched and people were having to work overtime, which the management might not have been aware of.
The advantages of using MindBridge
MindBridge helps clients gain insights from their data. Part of the AI element of MindBridge is that it learns from the whole population, all the transactions, to help it define what is a ‘normal’ transaction. Data can be extracted from multiple sources; in the case of this Chartered Accountants for example, they built their own data platform to connect to and extract data from more than 350 accounting systems. As their Partner explained;
“We are on the journey to real-time advisory.”
This journey does, however, mean that regulators now need to do some work to catch up with AI technology. There is a new ISA [International Standard of Audit] coming out, which touches on data analytics, and the Firm has had a roundtable discussion with the regulators and most firms in the top 20 to discuss the technology available and what the barriers are of implementing those in terms of the regulatory guidance.
The future of technology within accounting
The Firm’s Partner concluded the interview with her thoughts of what the future of accounting will look like; “Real-time advisory and that data insight is going to be huge. As some of the low-level compliance falls away, the challenge we will have is bringing people in, in year one, and helping them to understand the systems and what can go wrong when that low-level stuff has been done for them. People skills will have greater focus as technology does some of the other jobs for us.”
The two articles published by Accountancy Age, detailing the full interview, can be read in full HERE and HERE.
For further information on this exciting topic, don’t forget to sign up for the next MGI Worldwide webinar, ‘ How AI is changing the audit landscape’ on November 7th.
Sign up to MGI Worldwide’s AI webinar in Partnership with MindBridge here.
MGI Worldwide is a top 20 ranked global accounting network with some 5,400 independent auditors, accountants and tax experts in over 90 countries around the world.