Empanelment as Peer Reviewer with the Peer Review Board

The global & national economic environment has in recent times been featured by the turbulences on the financial scenario following the unearthing of the frauds and procedural and financial malpractices. The credibility of the opinion expressed by the auditors on the independent review of financial statements and records have come under close scrutiny. All these developments manifest the need of a mechanism designed on the lines of the sound international practices and molded in light of the indigenous environmental tenets, which provides, apart from the corporate governance, due assurance on the quality of the review and the compliance of the generally accepted parameters on the part of the auditors.

In its proactive pursuit to upgrade and maintain audit quality standards, the Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India took initiative as far back as 1998 to introduce a system of review of the work of professionals and subsequently the Indian accountancy profession took a giant leap forward with the establishment of Peer Review Board in April 2002. Such an endeavour of the Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) aims to maintain and enhance the quality of attestation services and to guide its members in improving their performance and ensuring adherence to various technical standards issued by it from time to time. It is the Institute’s endeavour to meet the demands of high quality assurance, consistency and greater transparency.

Since, the Peer Reviews are to be carried out by Reviewers empanelled with the Peer Review Board. The criteria for empanelment as a Reviewer is that a person should

    * be a member;
    * possess at least ten years' experience of audit; and
    * be currently active in the practice of accounting and auditing Applications were invited from members fulfilling the above criteria for empanelment with the Board. More than 4316 members have been empanelled as Reviewers.

To ensure that the reviews are carried out in time and as many Practice Units are reviewed as possible, including those located in mofusil areas, the Board wishes to enlarge the resource pool of Reviewers. Members fulfilling the criteria mentioned above are invited to empanel themselves as Reviewers by applying in the prescribed format under the link 'PEER REVIEW BOARD' or can be obtained from the Institute's Office at New Delhi and send to Ms. Seema Gerotra, Secretary, Peer Review Board, The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, P.O. Box 7100, I.P. Marg, New Delhi 110 002 or at email id peerreviewboard@icai.in.

We hope, in order to achieve the objective of Peer Review viz., enhancement in the quality of attestation services performed by the members of the Institute, cooperation would be forthcoming from the members by empanelling as a Reviewer.