Enforcement NewsletterAugust 2014In March 2014, during the Executive Directors Conference, participants heard concerns expressed by a representative of the U.S. Department of Labor about the quality of Employee Benefit Plan (EBP) audits conducted by public accounting firms. The DOL referred suspected audit deficiencies to the AICPA for follow-up, including determination of whether the public accounting firm underwent peer review.
NASBA obtained the EBP audit list and created state specific spreadsheets to provide to each Accountancy Board. The list included the EBP name, sponsor, address and other related data and also included the EBP’s auditor name and employer identification number. The state specific spreadsheets were distributed by email to the Executive Director of each jurisdiction on June 3, 2014. This information may prove helpful in assisting the boards in: (i) verifying the registration of the EBP auditor in its state or jurisdiction, if required, and (ii) using the AICPA’s Facilitated State Board Access (FSBA) database to verify that the public accounting firms in a jurisdiction had the appropriate peer review report issued, including the required reference to EBP audits. Please remember that NASBA is available to assist any State Board that requests help in verifying the registration and peer review report information related to this issue. If you have any questions or need any assistance from NASBA, please do not hesitate to contact Stacey Grooms at [email protected]. |
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At that time, several Executive Directors expressed concern that State Boards were not receiving DOL referrals and they requested that NASBA, on behalf of the State Boards, obtain a complete list of EBP audits for each jurisdiction.