A meeting was organised on 26 November by the Polish Agency for Audit Oversight (PANA) and the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (UKNF) on the premises of the UKNF in Warsaw, gathering representatives of PANA, the UKNF and audit firms. 

In his opening speech, Jacek Gdański, President of PANA, has emphasised the importance of quality in the audit of PIEs for building confidence in the economy. He has indicated that thanks to the arrangement of cooperation signed last year, PANA and the KNF achieve a synergy effect. He has emphasised that information presented during panels will be useful for statutory auditors in their daily work and that high quality of audit translates into the quality of financial and non-financial reporting, and, in consequence, increased confidence in the financial sector among investors and other stakeholders. 

Dariusz Adamski, Deputy Chair of the KNF, has referred in his opening speech to the role of statutory auditors, audit committees and the financial supervision authority in ensuring stability of the financial market and security of financial market participants. As he has highlighted, the high quality of data in financial statements and high quality of statutory auditors’ work have a positive effect on the pace and course of supervisory processes carried out by the UKNF.

Dariusz Adamski has pointed to the effectiveness of activities undertaken as part of ongoing cooperation between the KNF and PANA and a downward trend when it comes to the number of the supervision authority’s interventions addressed to PANA due to concerns regarding the quality of audit conducted by some audit firms. He has emphasised that the current cooperation is important as it fosters confidence in the financial market. 

During his speech, Dariusz Adamski has also emphasised that the first year of the mandatory sustainability reporting attestation confirmed both the readiness of the market to apply new requirements and the need to further develop audit practices and clarify standards at EU level. In the upcoming years, it will be crucial to increase transparency and comparability of reports, including attestation reports. They will also give an answer to the question to what extent sustainability reporting actually supports energy transition.

The Deputy Chair of the KNF thanked the President of PANA for his initiative to organise the conference together and expressed his hope that the same format would be continued.

The meeting was also attended by the representatives of the KNF who are members of the PANA Board: Marcin Mikołajczyk, Deputy Chair of the KNF, and Magdalena Wysocka, Deputy Director of the Public Companies Department at the UKNF, and representatives of the UKNF, who, during two discussion panels, shared their experiences from the cooperation with audit firms that review PIEs’ reports and from the first sustainability reporting attestation. 

Jolanta Frączkowska, Manager of the Accounting and Reporting Team of the UKNF’s Insurance Supervision Department, hosted the panel ‘Quality of audit at PIEs: perspectives of supervisory authorities, supervised entities and other stakeholders, which was also attended by Magdalena Wysocka, Deputy Director of the UKNF’s Public Companies Department. The panel focused on the quality of statutory audit at PIEs as seen from the perspective of supervisory authorities, supervised entities and other stakeholders. As part of four thematic blocks, participants discussed the matters of methodology and risk, independence and ethics, role of audit committees, as well as the quality of audit and its future.

The second discussion panel, focused on lessons learnt from sustainability reporting attestation, was attended by Renata Kowalska, Manager of the Reporting and Securitisation Team of the UKNF’s Public Companies Department. The discussion concerned, among other things, changes in regulations, areas of risk, and data quality. One of the topics raised during the thematic blocks was cooperation between report preparers and a statutory auditor. Moreover, activities related to supervision of attestation were presented.