Joe Welch is an ACA chartered accountant, working as a management consultant at Protiviti London. Joe is leading the use of enabling technologies at Protiviti’s Internal Audit and Financial Advisory solution, focussing on equipping clients’ three lines of defence to begin or accelerate their digital transformation journey. He has led and continues to deliver a number of technology-driven consulting projects, including process mining and machine learning auditing, in a variety of client industries.

Joe continues to work within a Group Risk & Assurance (GRA) function for a global non-FS company. The functions overarching goal is to provide trusted risk management advisory and assurance services to the wider Group, which currently operate in 25 countries. The approach to achieve this goal can be summarised into three broad categories of activity:1) Raise awareness of risk, including identifying emerging risks; assigning core risks to a specific ‘owner’; identifying individual ‘risk owners’ within respective Business Units (BU) ; and providing mechanisms by which BUs can assess their exposure to these risks;2) Develop responses to manage risk better, by identifying and sharing knowledge and ‘best practice’ controls; providing BUs, and stakeholders, with ongoing advice about tailoring the design of controls to provide operational effectiveness; and monitoring the suitability and timeliness of proposed action plans;3) Provide assurance that risk management is operating as intended. This includes ensuring that a BU regularly performs/updates its self-assessments; reviewing these to ensure their validity; identifying control gaps; evaluating the effectiveness of controls design and testing their operation; and performing substantive work on any uncontrolled risks.

Internal Audit: Various Clients – Joe has undertaken several internal audit engagements across various industries. Key engagements including working within a co-sourced internal audit team to perform a review on a global legal services firm, which involved assessing the design and operating effectiveness of their current practice. Working with management, Joe proposed recommendations to senior stakeholders on accounts payable, payroll and their month end close process, which have since been implemented. Joe has also worked on an internal audit review for a large business management software provider where he was responsible for gaining assurance around current research and development expenditure.SOX Implementation – Joe has performed several SOX compliance implementations across a variety of industries, in order to assess the effectiveness of financial statement controls prior to an external audit. Joe has been responsible for testing the areas of provisions, accruals, payroll and financial statement close process; assessing the effectiveness of controls in place; and proposing recommendations to senior stakeholders to enhance compliance with SOX requirements.Global Bank: Global CDD Standards – Alignment of a Risk Assessment Methodology (RAM) – Joe assisted the Financial Crime & Compliance team in supporting the alignment of the RAM across all lines of business of a Global Bank. Key responsibilities included enhancement of the RAM across all key risk factors and reporting the findings to senior stakeholder groups. This involved an appreciation of AML regulatory requirements in both the US and UK (e.g. BSA Examination Manual and the JMLSG). Joe also performed the impact assessment of the proposed Global RAM within the Global Banking & Markets (GBM) sector, which involved data handling and mapping of five key markets, along with detailed scenario testing.

External Audit: Global Bank – Joe was on the statutory audit team for a Global Bank over two successive years, focussing on both the Operations and Financial Statement Closing Processes (FSCP) teams. Within Operations, Joe performed extensive substantive testing around the reconciliations performed between front office and middle office systems. Within FSCP, Joe performed process walkthroughs and testing on manual journal entries, and reviewed both consolidated financial statements and the disclosure notes under UK, US and Swiss GAAP. In addition, Joe was also responsible for instructing and reviewing control walkthroughs that had been outsourced.Global Bank: CASS & Client Money Compliance review – Joe performed a CASS review on a Global Bank for two successive years focusing on the bank’s compliance with the UK FCA Client Money regulations. Key activities included performing a gap analysis on the securities lending area of the bank, identifying areas of potential risk and non-compliance and assessing the adequacy of the client money controls in place. In addition, Joe was also responsible for a review of existing securities lending processes by performing walkthroughs on the various product/services that the bank offered, and performing an analysis of the system data it produced.