The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is consulting on its proposed five-year strategic plan that runs from 2022–2026.
With a focus on investors, the proposed plan sets out a roadmap for the PCAOB to achieve four goals relating to:
- Modernizing standards that includes meaningfully improving audit quality and enhancing the PCAOB’s ability to enforce the standards and inspect for compliance; engaging in dialogue with stakeholders; and assessing needs for developments in data and technology.
- Enhancing inspections, including continuing to perform robust inspections, increasing transparency in reporting inspection results and improved timeliness of inspection reports, as well as delivering useful guidance to the audit profession. There will also be a greater focus on a firm’s remediation efforts.
- Strengthening enforcement, including a more assertive approach to bringing enforcement actions, imposing more significant penalties and other relief, increasing transparency in enforcement actions and collaborating with other regulators to bring concurrent actions.
- Improving organizational effectiveness through a focus on employees, enhancing stakeholder engagement and improving internal processes.
To achieve the four proposed goals, the PCOAB also plans to continue to engage meaningfully with its stakeholders and remain adaptable to an evolving environment.
