Each year, Protiviti conducts its Internal Audit Capabilities and Needs Survey to assess current skill levels of internal audit executives and professionals, identify areas in need of improvement and help to stimulate the sharing of leading practices throughout the profession.
In this white paper, we describe the outlook of internal audit leaders within the financial services industry. For the first time in many years, this survey reflects the views of internal audit professionals during a time when the global economy and its financial system were recovering from the global financial crisis. The risk landscape it paints therefore reflects people’s risk perceptions in a newly evolving world.
The findings discussed in our paper are based on responses from nearly 300 chief audit executives (CAEs) and internal audit professionals in the U.S. financial services industry. In the opinion of these respondents, cybersecurity represented the greatest area for internal audit functions to address. We have devoted one entire section of this report to the increasing attention that cybersecurity continues to garner. But this is far from the only area internal audit organizations seek to improve as they look forward to the coming year. A few areas that organizations prioritized as particularly acute challenges include:
- Agile Risk Management
- Model Risk Management & Data Analytics
- Mobile Applications
