The truth lies beyond box-ticking.
Confirm when it is right. Confront when it is wrong.
Corporate Governance issues do not announce themselves - they are hidden beneath the policies that appear compliant on paper. We at Excellence Enablers' perform governance audit that goes beyond box-ticking. We examine whether governance is embedded in decision-making, risk management and board oversight. We check and report what is working and what isn't, giving the organization's management and Board an unbiased view of gaps before they become a reputational or regulatory risk. Our audit recognizes the root causes rather that giving a temporary fix to the Corporate governance issues.
For further details, please contact Ms. Divyani Garg at d.garg@excellenceenablers.in or click here.
It is an assessment of Board and committee structure and composition, both numbers and competence; functioning of Board and committees; systems to ensure regulatory compliance, disclosure quality, risk oversight; Board processes and policies. All these are assessed against both legal requirements and what good practices in corporate governance dictate. Governance audit is not secretarial audit. The latter assesses only the compliance track record. Governance audit looks at the quality, and not only the quantity.
It is not mandatory like statutory audit. However, for listed companies, large public companies, or companies looking to expand or preparing for IPO, it should not be skipped. The gaps that surface later in compliance and in processes are usually more expensive to fix than the ones caught early.
A compliance check or secretarial audit tells a company whether their compliance is on track, and whether it has done all that law and regulations expect it to be compliant with. A governance audit asks the harder questions: are you seeing value in compliance? Can you modify some existing practices so that they add value? Diversity of Board, in terms of gender, competence, age; Audit Committee having dedicated meetings for discussion of internal audit findings; Independent Directors adding value through separate meetings – are just a few of the topics that this audit covers.
This kind of audit can be commissioned by either the Board or by the management. Stakeholder interests are best served by a robust governance audit.
Some of the common findings include incomplete terms of reference of Board level committees, weak whistleblower channels or improper reporting, improper processes relating to related-party transactions, non-appointment of persons to key positions like Chief Risk Officer, and a gap between what the policy document says and what actually happens in practice.
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