AUDIT ANALYTICS AUDIT

CASE STUDY C: INCREASING AUDIT EFFICIENCY
exceptions improves over time. To ensure system effectiveness, a
comprehensive set of procedures and ratios are relied upon.
In particular, there are 18 procedures or ratios that address detection,
deterrence, financial losses, and compliance issues.
Figure C-1: Branch Monitoring Process
Some specific procedures examined are check advances, excess in
accounts, overdrafts, cashier out-of-balance situations, federal tax
payment cancelations, and electronic fund transfers.
The success of the SAB branch monitoring initiative demonstrates the
value proposition of continuous auditing. In addition, it offers some
insight relative to the interplay that naturally exists between continuous
monitoring and continuous auditing, and this raises important questions
about CA/CM. For example, CM is historically viewed as a managerial
responsibility whereas continuous auditing is perceived as an auditing
function. However, a single system can be implemented to perform both
CA and CM simultaneously. In this setting, questions might arise relative
to issues such as independence.
POTENTIAL ENHANCEMENTS
SAB’s audit alerts can be integrated into a discriminant function with
weights for the various alerts, thus creating a daily "grade" for each
branch. These grades can then be ranked and used to direct "surprise
audits" for branches with higher perceived risk, and process risks could
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