On 1 July 2026, at the 78th Foundation Day celebrations of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India — CA Day — held at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, with the Vice-President of India, Shri C.P. Radhakrishnan, present as Chief Guest, ICAI through its Peer Review Board launched a dedicated web portal for the peer review process. The setting mattered: this was not a quiet administrative circular but a launch given the weight of the profession's most visible day of the year. For a mechanism that has, since the Peer Review Guidelines, 2022 came into force, run largely on emailed applications, downloaded forms and back-and-forth correspondence with the Board's secretariat, this is a real change in how a practice unit will experience peer review — even though the substance of the framework itself has not moved an inch. I have gone through the process at the firm level and know how much of it used to depend on chasing an email thread, so I want to set out plainly what has shifted, what has not, and what firms should do in response.
What peer review actually is
It helps to be clear about the thing before discussing the portal that now runs it. Peer review is an independent examination of the assurance work of a practice unit by another chartered accountant who has been trained and empanelled as a reviewer. It is not a statutory audit of the firm, and it is not a disciplinary proceeding. The Statement on Peer Review describes it as an educative and corrective exercise. The reviewer's job is to see whether the firm's systems, policies and documentation for its attest engagements meet the technical, professional and ethical standards the firm is already bound by — principally the Standard on Quality Control (SQC 1) — and to give constructive feedback where they fall short. The Peer Review Board, constituted by the Council of ICAI in 2002 alongside the first Statement on Peer Review, administers the whole thing.
Over the years the reach of the mechanism has widened well beyond ICAI's own requirements. The Securities and Exchange Board of India, through its circular dated 5 April 2010, requires that limited review and statutory audit reports of listed entities be signed only by auditors holding a valid peer review certificate. The Comptroller and Auditor General factors peer review certification into its empanelment scoring for government audits. So for a growing number of firms, the certificate is not a badge but a precondition to the work itself.
What changed on 1 July 2026
The process has always started with Form 1 — the application-cum-questionnaire — being submitted to the Board. Historically that meant emailing the form to the peer review board or uploading a version downloaded from the ICAI website, after which the Board would recommend a panel of three reviewers to the practice unit, the unit would select one, and the review would proceed through to the reviewer's report and, on the Board's acceptance, the certificate. Ten prescribed forms govern the interaction between the Board, the practice unit and the reviewer through that cycle.
The new PRB web portal brings that entire flow into one online system. By ICAI's own account of the launch, it digitises the complete peer review lifecycle — from the submission of the application and the allotment of the peer reviewer, through the submission of the peer review report, to the generation of the Peer Review Certificate itself. In plain terms, the parts of the process that used to travel by email and PDF now sit in a single system that both the firm and the reviewer can see. As the portal has only just gone live, firms should still expect the usual settling-in period of any new system, and I would treat the portal's own screens as the authority on exactly how each form is filed and how fees are handled.
For most practitioners the practical benefit is simple. When Form 1 sat in an email queue, a firm often had no clear line of sight on where its application stood or when the three reviewer names would come back. A portal that timestamps each step removes a good deal of that uncertainty, and it should make it far easier to demonstrate, later, exactly when a firm applied — which matters when a certificate is a condition of accepting an engagement.
Who is covered, and by when
The portal does not change who must be peer reviewed. That is still governed by the phased mandate, which has been rolled out in stages and deferred more than once. As it currently stands:
| Phase | Applicability (broadly) | Effective date |
|---|---|---|
| Phase I | Practice units conducting statutory audit of listed entities | 1 April 2022 |
| Phase II | Practice units rendering attestation services to unlisted public companies above prescribed size thresholds, and certain entities that have raised significant public funds | 1 April 2023 |
| Phase III | Firms auditing entities having raised public funds exceeding ₹50 crore, or firms with four or more partners | 1 July 2025 (deferred from earlier dates) |
| Phase IV | (a) Firms proposing to audit branches of Public Sector Banks; and (b) practice units rendering attestation services with three or more partners | 31 December 2026 (deferred from 1 January 2026) |
The Phase IV deferment is the live one to watch. By an announcement dated 31 December 2025, the Board pushed its commencement from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026, giving mid-sized firms roughly a year of breathing room. It is worth reading that extension for what it is: additional preparation time, not a reprieve. A firm that intends to audit a PSB branch, or that carries three or more partners and accepts statutory audits, needs a valid certificate in hand before it takes on such work, and the review cycle itself takes months. Treating December 2026 as the date to start applying rather than the date to be certified by is exactly the mistake the deferment invites.
A word on the questionnaire and AQMM
Form 1 is not a formality. Its questionnaire runs across three parts — the profile of the practice unit, its quality-control policies and procedures across leadership, ethics, client acceptance, human resources, engagement performance and monitoring, and a self-evaluation under the Audit Quality Maturity Model (AQMM v1.0). Part C, the AQMM self-scoring, is mandatory for units auditing listed entities. In my experience firms lose more time here than anywhere else, because the questionnaire assumes a documented quality-control system exists and is being followed. If a firm has been running on habit rather than on a written SQC 1 framework — engagement letters on file, documented risk assessments, indexed working papers, evidence of monitoring — the questionnaire is where that gap becomes visible. The portal will make filing easier; it will not fill those gaps for you.
The consequences of ignoring it
Peer review compliance is not optional for the firms it covers, and the Peer Review Guidelines, 2022 build in real consequences. Clause 25 of the 2022 Guidelines provides for restrictions where a practice unit does not comply, and non-compliance can be treated as professional or other misconduct within the disciplinary framework of the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949. Set against the fact that the certificate is itself a gateway to listed-entity, PSB-branch and government audit work, the incentive structure is clear enough. This is not a compliance item to leave for the quarter-end scramble.
What I would do now
If your firm falls under any current phase, or expects to under Phase IV, the sensible steps are unglamorous. Confirm your applicable phase against the mandate rather than assuming it. Register on and familiarise yourself with the new PRB portal early, while there is no deadline pressure, so that the interface is not a fresh obstacle when it matters. Put your quality-control documentation in order against SQC 1 before you begin the questionnaire, not during it. And if you are heading into Phase IV, initiate the process well ahead of 31 December 2026, because the review takes time and the reviewer panel is finite.
That the portal was launched on CA Day, on a stage shared with the Vice-President of India, is more than ceremony. It signals that ICAI sees quality assurance as central to the profession's standing, not as a compliance afterthought. The portal is, at heart, a welcome piece of plumbing — it should make a process that many firms found opaque more transparent and easier to track. But it changes the mechanism of applying, not the substance of what is being reviewed. The firms that come through peer review comfortably are still the ones that were doing the underlying work properly all along; the portal simply makes that easier to show.
This article is written in my personal capacity and reflects my understanding of the position as on the date of writing. It is intended for general information only and does not constitute professional advice. The Peer Review Board portal and mandate are subject to change, and readers should verify the current position on the ICAI and PRB websites and take advice specific to their own facts before acting.
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