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Matters concerning evaluation of the creditworthiness of consumers have returned to the focus during the last year. Discussions revolve around consumers’ increased loan burden and share of loans in default; there is lobbying for additional support from the establishment of a positive credit registry, and the Financial Inspectorate has started getting tougher with fines on market participants who don’t abide by the rules.

Those operating in the financial sector are bound by various laws along with requirements for internal audit arising from those laws. In addition, the Auditors Activities Act governs the provision of internal audit service, defining who is allowed to be engaged in the professional activities of an internal auditor.

In their work, internal auditors often come across a situation where clients want to have an internal audit done in their organization, but since they have no previous contact with an internal audit service, they have a number of questions.

“Our partnership with Grant Thornton Baltic’s internal auditors started in 2016 and it’s clear we hit the nail on the head with our selection,” says CEO of Primero Finance OÜ, Marti Küttis.

It did not take long for Piret Lemsalu, CFO of AS Hoolekandeteenused, to realise that they had hit the jackpot with Grant Thornton Baltic, whom they chose as their internal audit service provider as a result of a procurement held in 2021.

For two consecutive years, Grant Thornton Baltic’s business risk and internal audit team served as the independent auditor of the programmes of the Estonian National Agency for the Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps.

People first associate the word "audit" with balance sheets and income statements, in other words, a financial audit. It's much less common for them to think of an internal audit, the content and nature of which is completely different from a financial audit.

Have you ever heard of the Certificate on Financial Statements, (CFS)? If your project received support from Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe , you definitely have to be up to date with that.

From 2017, Estateguru has expanded outside Estonia to offer real estate investment opportunities in the other Baltic states and elsewhere in Europe. With rapid growth taking place, it started to improve and change the company’s risk management system, which led to a need for an internal auditor.

Financial services are one of the most strictly regulated business areas. It is to be expected that every financial service provider must have an internal auditor, be it a paid staff member or outsourced service. ESTO Group, a credit provider founded in 2017 that expended to Latvia and Lithuania in 2021, went the outsourcing route and partnered with Grant Thornton Baltic for internal audit services.

It’s said it takes years to build trust but just a moment to destroy it. The dictum should be taken especially seriously in the financial sector where big sums of money hang in the balance along with the trust of clients, partners and supervisory authorities.

What do Mauritania, Kosovo, Moldova, Iraq, Kenya and Kyrgyzstan have in common? Answer: the e-Governance Academy has provided advisory services to them and tens of other countries in transition, helping local government institutions and NGOs efficiently develop electronic public services and make democratic processes better.

For Grant Thornton Baltic OÜ, the 2021/2022 season in Estonia was very successful - our turnover increased by 24% compared to the previous financial year. The impressive growth took us to the second place in the ranking of auditing companies compiled by business newspaper Äripäev.

On 12 May 2022, the Government of the Republic approved a draft amendment to the Local Government Act that makes internal audit a requirement in local governments. At least once every four years, an internal audit must be conducted to verify that the internal control system meets certain requirements.

The law transposes the EU directive into Estonian law and entails an obligation for organizations to create internal and external reporting channels for reporting internal misconduct. The infringements that whistleblowers can report are very different - breaches of procurement procedures, internal fraud, breaches of environmental requirements, and so on.

Grant Thornton Baltic conducted a survey among companies to find out how many of them are consciously and purposefully engaged in anti-money laundering. Look into the results and test your company!