L'évolution récente des contraintes du réviseur d'entreprises dans le contexte d'une législation et d'une économie en constance évolution

Abstract

Always on the move, the economic world follows a dynamic process over time. It seems that recent years have been particularly full of developments. In order to support this steady evolution but also to address some of the weaknesses highlighted by the financial crisis of 2008, the legal framework has also had to be amended at a very high rhythm. In addition, other societal trends, such as the increasing need for a work-life balance or the rise of digital technologies, have contributed to changing many of the benchmarks of corporate life. As economic actors, auditors in Belgium are not immune to changes of all kinds which affect their direct environments but also those of their clients. The aim of this thesis is to understand the recent evolution of the constraints to which the Belgian auditor is exposed and to assess the impacts on its organisation, workload and responsibility as well as the possible consequences on the audit market overall in the long run. In order to carry out the most relevant analysis possible, we have selected constraints arising from ones of the main and the most representative areas of the auditor's environment. Those selected areas are quality control, compliance, auditing standards, matters requiring in-depth technical skills, human resources and digitalisation. Based on regulations and literature, these analyses were also supported as much as possible by interviews with professionals and case studies. It results from our investigations that all the analysed constraints tend towards a structural change in the organisation of the Belgian auditor's work, an increase in his workload and a higher level of responsibility. Mainly as a consequence of the technical nature of some specific areas and a more restrictive formalism, there might be observed in the long run a strengthening of the dominant position held by the Big Four and a gradual increase in the portfolios of medium-sized audit firms within the mid-market segment. Smaller audit firms would rely more heavily on mandates in small-scale businesses and special assignments. In order to reach a critical size enabling them to better face all the new constraints, it would appear reasonable to expect some of these smaller audit firms to group together or be absorbed and thereby contribute to a sector consolidation.