Effekten af intern revisions påtegning af regnskabet i Danmark

Abstrakt

15 years ago, the Chief Audit Executives (CAE) in Denmark were required by law to co-sign the financial statements together with the external auditor. Even though this law has now long since been removed many of the internal auditors still choose to co-sign the financial statements. This task is not conducted by internal auditors anywhere else in the world. In this thesis we therefore refer to this task as the Danish Model. With a work task so exclusive to a single country one might ask how this has potentially affected the internal auditors of Denmark, and how their work process and opinions might differ from the internal auditors in the rest of the world as a result. This is what this thesis seeks to answer. In this thesis we will create comparative data, regarding how much operational and financial audit the audit functions provide in Denmark and Norway, respectively. We will do this through use of interviews with Norwegian internal auditors, as well as a survey directed towards internal auditors in Denmark. Furthermore, we seek to uncover Danish internal auditors’ opinions on the matter of co-signing financial statements, through in-depth interviews. From this we seek to find the perceived pros and cons of cosigning as well as the effect of the Danish Model. In the end, we see that the Danish Model has resulted in the internal audit functions in Denmark provide far more financial audit than the same function in Norway. The progression has steadily moved towards providing less and less financial audit, as the number of CAE’s that co-sign the financial statements decrease. Furthermore we see that the spilt between the auditors who co-sign and those who do not, and the difference in the type of work they provide, likely has resulted in the board of directors lacking a clear image of what the internal audit function actually does.