In today's volatile business environment, organizations face a wide array of complex business risks. These risks come in the form of many issues: regulatory compliance, litigation, competitive market pressures, changing technology, investor demands, corporate governance, business ethics, and accountability.
India's integration into the global markets has brought with it additional challenges of quality and optimum productivity and efficiency. How clients manage these risks is critical to the future of their organizations.

The Board is accountable for ensuring that the organization has a robust risk assessment framework and adequate and effective internal control systems, designed to manage these risks and provide reasonable assurance that the organization’s objectives are being achieved. Although in practice this function is normally delegated to management, it in no way reduces the Board’s ultimate responsibility. Board level accountability and performance expectations from stakeholders are ever increasing, and director remunerations and reappointments are increasingly based on individual contribution to a company’s performance. It is therefore essential that boards evaluate their approach to fulfilling their roles and responsibilities so that continuous improvement is achieved and value is added to the operations of the organization.

Board composition, board size, frequency of board meetings, directors’ qualifications and work experience, and their relevance to the organization’s business, are factors that are under increased scrutiny from stakeholder groups. This is a growing trend and the starting point to improving a client’s board performance.

Lexcorp’s independent facilitation and management of the process also allows board members to focus on SEBI’s Corporate Governance guidelines and develop a tailored response framework.

Internal Audit must provide management with a dynamic, value-adding tool, which makes a positive contribution to the achievement of the organization's business objectives. It must assist the board and management to discharge their corporate governance responsibilities by assisting with identifying and managing risks and providing:

• Objective evaluations of business risk
• Regular evaluations of the organization's system of control
• Effective reviews of operational and financial performance

With a changing and more cost competitive environment, it is essential that maximum value be obtained from the Internal Audit function. The Internal Audit function must now increasingly contribute to the achievement of overall corporate objectives while remaining an independent and valued voice helping the organization rationalize risk and reward.

This approach, also known as co-sourcing, involves a balance between retaining an in-house team and full outsourcing. The in-house team has control of and responsibility for internal audit, and calls on external advisors for additional support and specialist skills when required. Many organizations are actively outsourcing their internal audit function as a way of cutting costs, increasing efficiency, and responsiveness, and upgrading their in-house capabilities.

This approach involves an integrated formal partnership between the in-house internal audit function and the external advisors, with each party sharing and contributing complementary knowledge, skills and experiences.

Our Internal Audit approach is designed to address the same business concerns that management is required to deal with, and to provide assurance in the following key areas:

• Operational efficiencies and effectiveness, with an emphasis on those areas with the greatest risk exposure
• Compliance with regulatory requirements, approved policies and procedures and industry best practices
• Quality of management information

Our Internal audit methodology has an operational and business risk focus and allows for a flexible and high quality response to address Audit Committee and management concerns. The risk assessment process is fundamental to our Internal Audit approach, which requires business areas to become formally accountable for internal control assurance by conducting self-assessment of their control infrastructure. The Internal Audit thus becomes a key component of the client organization's approach to corporate governance and business risk management.

The Internal Audit Services Team collaborates with client organizations in ensuring flawless processes, effective controls and complete compliance with internal and external policies, guidelines and regulations. We seek to deliver and protect value through a detailed understanding and review of systems and processes to systematically identify the risks, prioritize risk management and evaluate controls. Our approach involves the use of in-house methodologies blended with internationally accepted frameworks and standards, backed by in-depth research and rich practice experience.

• Systems, Control and Process Reviews
• Special Audits
• Internal Audits
• Trust and Retention Account Audits
• Concurrent Audits
• Compliance Reviews
• Management Audits
• Compliance with Clause 49 Provisions
• Treasury and Forex Audits

• Assessing whether the internal audit focus and planning process reflect its needs.
• Assessing whether there are clear reporting lines and that the structure and status of Internal Audit within the organization is appropriate.
• Reviewing work methodologies to ensure they comply with relevant standards and current practices

Our review is carried out by way of questionnaires, interviews with the Audit Committee, management and Internal Audit staff, observation and review of the internal audit work, and benchmarking with generic comparative criteria. The results are reviewed and the key observations and recommendations are then presented to the Audit Committee.