How to do a good job of internal audit

Currently, China's economy has entered a new normal of economic development, the economic situation is becoming more and more complex, medium-high speed, excellent structure, new power, more challenges to become the main features of the new normal, as a local financial institutions, agricultural and commercial banks, how to adapt to the new normal, to further strengthen the audit supervision and improve the internal control, and to play an active role in auditing "immune function" role is a topic of great significance. As a local financial institution, how to adapt to the new normal, further strengthen audit supervision, improve internal control, and actively play the role of audit "immune function" to effectively promote the Agricultural Bank to accelerate the pace of modern enterprise construction, and promote the healthy and orderly development of the business is an important topic. This paper intends to combine the new changes in the audit work under the new normal of agricultural and commercial banks, analyze the current audit problems and countermeasures proposed.

Keywords: rural commercial banks, internal audit, trends, thinking

Internal audit is an independent, objective supervision, evaluation and consulting activities, is an important part of the internal control of rural commercial banks. It promotes the achievement of organizational goals by reviewing and evaluating the appropriateness, legality and effectiveness of business activities and internal controls. With the deepening of the reform of rural financial institutions and the continuous intensification of market competition, the auditing work of rural commercial banks has been increasingly emphasized by managers at all levels, and has gradually been used to evaluate and improve the internal operating activities, reflect the risk situation, and consolidate and enhance the foundation of internal control and corporate governance. Especially under the new economic normal, it is crucial for rural commercial banks to make good preparations for adaptation, which requires rural commercial banks to urgently change their working concepts, focus on business development and management, adhere to the risk-oriented, comprehensively strengthen the construction of the audit system, constantly innovate auditing methods and approaches, and further enhance the level of systematization, informatization and refinement of the auditing work, and implement the refinement of auditing management, as well as to vigorously improve the quality of auditing. Vigorously improve the quality of audit work.

I. New changes in the internal audit work of agricultural and commercial banks under the new normal

(a) New changes in the concept of audit. In Shandong Province rural credit unions, for example, in recent years, it has introduced the "audit operation quality assessment measures" for many years, regularly informing the audit work carried out. Using the audit information system data, the number of projects carried out by the audit department, the number of problems found in the audit and the degree of risk, and zero problem projects are analyzed and ranked, and are communicated in the form of briefings and included in the assessment. The result of this high-pressure mode of assessment has forced a change in the audit concept of the internal audit department of rural commercial banks, realizing the audit efficiency "from loose to compact", the audit project "from face to face to accurate audit", and the audit awareness "from traditional to innovative". "From traditional to innovative" conceptual change to ensure that the new situation to adapt to the new characteristics of the audit work, leading to the sustainable and healthy development of the audit work.

(ii) new changes in audit content. With the arrival of the Internet financial era, modern financial services and information technology, networking, the combination of increasingly close, electronic banking as a whole showed rapid development trend, rural commercial banks on electronic banking attention has gradually deepened. However, compared with other state-owned large and medium-sized banks, rural commercial banks started their e-banking business later, and their internal audit work mainly favors internal control aspects, and all the inspections are aimed at ensuring that e-banking systems and risk prevention measures are implemented to reduce the possibility of internal staff fraud, and the compliance risk, information technology risk, and customer operation risk of e-banking business are hardly involved. In addition, rural commercial banks have gradually strengthened their research and development on the expansion of their traditional main business, for example, rural credit unions in Shandong Province have successively launched "Agricultural Loan", "Easy Loan", "Family Loan", "Micro Loan", "Micro Loan" and "Micro Loan". In Shandong Province, for example, rural credit unions have successively launched a series of financial products such as "Agricultural Loan Pass", "Easy Loan Pass", "Family Loan", "Micro Credit", and so on, which have been used to continuously improve the competitive strength of rural commercial banks. These new circumstances require that the internal audit work of rural commercial banks must keep up with the actual situation, and gradually extend the audit tentacles to new areas such as information technology, customer managers, operational risk audits, performance audits and other new areas, and through continuous improvement of the audit content, to effectively play the important role of internal audit supervision and evaluation.

(3) New changes in auditing methods. With the widespread application of cloud data, the era of big data has arrived, rural commercial banks gradually recognize the importance of the use of big data, internal audit work gradually increased the frequency and proportion of off-site audits, especially the business of agricultural and commercial banks have embarked on the era of centralized batch processing of data, the reasonable use of auditing software and other auxiliary procedures for batch processing of electronic data, set up a risk warning in advance, the establishment of a variety of risks Audit module will become the development direction of future audit. The use of auditing software for auditing can not only connect the total data of the whole bank, but also obtain all the data of all the branches within the jurisdiction at any time, so as to achieve the best auditing effect with the least amount of manpower, material and financial resources.

Two, the new normal internal audit problems

(a) narrow scope of internal audit, audit objectives lagging behind. At present, the rural commercial bank audit work is still stuck in the "checking the books audit" and "system audit" stage, did not really implement the risk-oriented supervision and evaluation, part of the rural commercial bank internal audit work is still more credit checks, other funds business checks less (such as bills, discounts, and other business checks), the internal audit work of the rural commercial bank, the internal audit work of the rural commercial bank is still more credit checks. Some rural commercial banks' internal audit work still focuses more on credit checking and less on checking other fund operations (e.g., bills, discounting, insurance and wealth management). According to the advanced concept of modern internal auditing, internal auditors need to participate in the risk management and governance process instead of mere compliance auditing. In the actual operation of audit supervision, the audit work of agricultural and commercial banks still focuses on ex post facto supervision and static inspection, and does not fully realize the whole process of supervision of ex ante, ex post facto and ex post facto operation. To a large extent, the auditors are mainly checking the errors and preventing the errors, and they pay little attention to the deep-rooted conflicts in the operation process of the rural commercial banks and the financial risks that jeopardize the survival of the rural commercial banks. In a sense, the audit supervision of rural commercial banks is only an extension of the ex post facto supervision of the business sector, and it only puts forward corrective opinions on the problems found, and it cannot realize the change of function from the account-based audit and the system-based audit to the risk-based audit. In addition, the audit of risk management, economic efficiency and other aspects of the audit is not involved in depth, which makes the internal audit can not serve the management of agricultural and commercial banks, can not adapt to the requirements of the rapid development of agricultural and commercial banks.

(2) The results of internal auditing are poorly utilized.

The process of internal auditing is not only a process of implementing audits to find irregularities, but also a process of digging out the root causes of the problems, so it is necessary to strengthen the use of internal audit results to prevent the recurrence of irregularities. From the current situation, the use of internal audit results of rural commercial banks only stays in the rectification of violations and violations of the financial penalties on the personnel, not timely summary of the problems of the various lines of refinement, the formation of a unified audit risk tips or reports, through the audit of the risk of the gates forward to prevent various types of risk. Insufficient follow-up audit efforts, audit and rectification of only "a change", many internal audit departments and personnel in the completion of the audit report and issued a rectification notice, there is a "like a heavy burden" feeling that you can take a good rest for a period of time, just wait for the audited unit to submit corrective action within the prescribed time. Many internal audit departments and personnel have a sense of "relief" after completing the audit report and issuing the rectification notice, thinking that they can take a good rest for a period of time and just wait for the audited unit to submit the rectification report within the specified time before deciding on the fact of follow-up audits, lacking an objective evaluation of the results of the rectification, giving up the right to supervise and guide the rectification process, and failing to form standardized audit rectification quality evaluation standards. The internal auditing deterrent effect and risk prevention role has not been well played.

(3) The quality of some auditors is uneven. The knowledge of internal audit work covers a wide range, and in the actual work found that some auditors do not have a solid foundation of audit knowledge, the basic banking business does not have a detailed knowledge and understanding, resulting in the part of the internal auditor can not find the bank in the operation of the process of the problem and take timely measures to deal with it, prone to cause risk potential. Especially in recent years, the importance of off-site auditing is gradually reflected in the audit department if you want to develop a perfect off-site auditing model, the auditor needs to be well thought out in the development of off-site model and accurately extract the data, which requires the auditor to fully understand the specific operating procedures of the various lines of business, and to be familiar with the various risk points and business weaknesses. On the contrary, if the auditors can not grasp the corresponding knowledge, they will feel "no way to start", can not make targeted audit recommendations, can not form an effective audit model, is not conducive to the development of off-site audit work. In addition, in recent years, the country has implemented a series of new laws and regulations, part of the audit practitioners can not synchronize the update of knowledge, resulting in a certain lack of legal knowledge, which makes it difficult for internal auditors to audit from the macro level of the bank's poor condition of a comprehensive and scientific analysis.

(D) lack of independence of internal audit activities

Rural commercial banks are a profit-oriented enterprises, in the process of operation, the need for self-financing to survive, the pursuit of profit maximization is still the primary goal. Currently, most of the rural commercial bank auditors of personnel appointments and dismissals, remuneration and treatment are in the hands of management, can not cut off the relationship of interest with the audited sector, the independence of the obvious lack of. In this case, the internal auditors have to supervise the business management activities of commercial banks, but also be led by the management of commercial banks, lacking the necessary independence. If a commercial bank invests its own funds in high-yield and high-risk projects, the internal auditors may ignore the risks and obey the orders of the senior management from the perspective of "interest first" when they find out the great risks of the investment through auditing, and even hide the truth when presenting the audit report, which not only fails to provide independent and objective audit recommendations, but also makes the internal audit department lack the necessary independence. Audit recommendations, but also make the internal audit of the loss of risk early warning role, increasing the existence of audit risk.

Three, the new normal internal audit recommendations and measures

(a) strengthen the use of audit results. A very important responsibility of internal audit is to evaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of internal control, and make timely recommendations for rectification. The use of audit results is an important part of the audit work, directly related to the role of the audit, so strengthen the use of audit results is an important part of good internal audit work. First, it is recommended to increase the rectification of irregularities. For the problems found by the audit department, it is required that the inspected units actively take measures to check the deficiencies and make up for them, and increase the efforts to rectify the irregularities. Those who fail to rectify the problems should be dealt with seriously. The accountability system for rectification is implemented to ensure the implementation of internal audit opinions and to give full play to the role of audit in pre-controlling risks, promoting management and guaranteeing the realization of business objectives. Adhere to the rectification follow-up tracking system, especially to focus on serious violations of the problem, do not let go until the change is in place. The second is to increase the accountability for irregularities. To y reflect on the harm of not following orders, not prohibiting, not investigating responsibility, the establishment of strict accountability procedures for non-compliance, the audit department of the irregularities found to put forward proposals to deal with the problem, in accordance with the provisions of the procedure to deal with in place, serious accountability and accountability, in particular, attention should be paid to adhere to the accountability of the management of the person responsible for, and to enhance the deterrent effect of the audit warnings. Third, further broaden the scope of application of audit results. The internal audit department should innovate at the right time, fully broaden the scope of application of audit results, improve the audit evaluation mechanism, strengthen the risk tips, maximize the use of audit results, urge the system to improve, standardize the operation, promote the internal management, and improve business results. Fourth, establish and improve the audit risk alert system. Improve the audit risk reminder system, expand the coverage of audit risk, carefully analyze the potential risk of audit findings in the form of risk reminder form copied to the business management departments, and the necessary follow-up tracking, supervise the professional management departments to improve and perfect the system and management measures to ensure the effectiveness of the risk reminder.

(ii) Strengthen the training of auditors. Auditors are different from general professional inspectors. With the expansion of the business field, the rapid development of the scale of business, the role of the audit department's functions will be broader and more important, the audit team building requirements are higher, the comprehensive ability of the audit staff requirements. First, create a good working and learning environment. With the recent central "two studies and one do" activities as an opportunity, through the development of multiple forms of idealism and revolutionary tradition education, guide auditors to correctly treat fame and fortune, based on their own duties, dedication and love of duty, and solid work. Establishment of good communication mechanism, efforts to strengthen the ideological communication between cadres and employees, the establishment and improvement of the symposium system, the audit project exchange and review system, the work assessment and evaluation feedback system, etc., in order to achieve the purpose of cohesion of talent with a good environment. Second, the establishment of a hierarchical training system. Conditions permitting, in accordance with the growth trajectory of talent, urging auditors to personal growth and development and social responsibility organically combined with the scientific development of modern auditing, and actively promote the realization of their own value of the auditors. According to the actual situation of the audit staff under the jurisdiction, formulate personalized education and training plans, improve the training effect through re-education, business training, rotation training, etc., and strive to train and create a group of politically competent, business proficient, excellent style, strict discipline, and combat effectiveness of the audit team. For electronic banking, bank cards, information technology and other specialized areas with high technical content, experts can be hired to train and carry out cooperative audits to enhance the competence of auditors. Third, the establishment of audit incentives and constraints. The audit department of rural commercial banks can assess the performance of auditors, gradually establish career development planning for auditors, and implement a rank management system. At the same time, the auditor is required to dare to tell the truth, tell the truth, dare to adhere to the principle, take the initiative to expose the problem, or else cause the audit risk, seriously investigate the responsibility of the auditors.

(C) strengthen audit quality control. Improve audit quality is the main means to enhance the value of the audit, by carrying out various types of audit activities to improve the quality of the audit, effectively circumvent the narrow scope of internal audit, management lag and other defects. In practice, the focus can be on strengthening audit supervision in such areas as compliance with business decisions, risk in the business process, authenticity of business results and reliability of reported information, and presenting audit reports with continuity and comparability. The implementation of the whole process of audit quality control, the establishment of audit projects and audit staff evaluation system, to ensure that the audit of the project is accurate, reasonable program, standardized operation, the report is true; to strengthen the static and dynamic analysis of the audit object, and actively play the audit of the supervision and evaluation functions; issued audit conclusions to focus on the scientific nature and effectiveness, and out of a certain reference value of the audit opinion for the department's research work to provide a basis for reference for leadership decision-making. Provide reference for leadership decision-making. In the specific audit inspection, the audit process can be implemented stratified cross-sampling, according to the time period and personnel were taken samples, personnel to do every employee involved in the business of sampling, to ensure that a certain time period of all the business outlets sampling; business can be the type of business as a unit to supervise the business for compliance, to ensure that the integrity of the sample inspection, from the beginning to the end of the business of the whole process Conduct compliance checks to ensure that all horizontal and vertical control points are not missed, to ensure that the audit evaluation and supervision of the facts are objective and complete.

(4) Reasonably set up the audit department and maintain the independence of the audit department.

Improving the company's corporate governance mechanism, effectively playing the role of the board of directors, the supervisory board, the general meeting of shareholders, and solving the corporate governance of the company's corporate governance of the stubborn problem of "similarity in form but not similarity in spirit", to provide a systematic basis for the implementation of the internal audit system in place. The internal audit department should conscientiously perform the duties assigned by the CBRC's "Internal Audit Guidelines for Banking Financial Institutions", seriously implement the functions of the audit committee, and organize and guide the internal audit work according to the authorization of the board of directors, which is the only way to ensure that the internal audit work is independent of the supervised subjects such as the management and functional departments, and to ensure that the internal audit staff can make independent judgments in their work. At the same time, rural commercial banks should also make reasonable planning arrangements for the remuneration and benefits of the auditors, so that their interests are independent of the relevant audit departments, to exclude the concerns of the internal auditors in the performance of their duties in terms of interest protection. Audit department settings must adhere to the principle of independence and the principle of authority, so that the internal audit department to return to its roots, to assume the sacred duties entrusted by the laws and regulations of internal audit.