British Bankers’ Association (BBA) joins forces with Confirmation.com to speed up auditing for hundreds of thousands of businesses

Last Updated: 07/30/2014

LONDON, UK and NASHVILLE, TN – December 8, 2014 – Banks, auditors and hundreds of thousands of businesses, charities and other organisations will be able to harness a new online service, BBA Confirmations, to make auditing safer, faster, more secure and less stressful in the New Year. This new service should cut response times by up to 90% savings hundreds of thousands of businesses valuable time.

Whenever a company or other body wants to file their accounts their auditors must send an audit confirmation letter to the entity’s banks – to check that the financial statements’ figures are accurate.

Until now this process has been conducted using the postal service, often posing serious difficulties for the organisation filing its accounts:

• 40% of auditors say they have had to delay signing an audit opinion due to missing confirmations.
• 66% of clients have had to contact their bank due to a missing confirmation.
• The current system costs European organisations more than £250 million a year, auditors say.

Which is why the BBA and their preferred technology partner Confirmation.com, which is the world’s leading online audit confirmation solution, are introducing a new service that gives banks and auditors greater control of the audit confirmation process.

The new service will allow accountants to upload their audit requests to an online platform enabling banks to respond much more quickly. This could cut the time taken to confirm an audit from months to a matter of days. It will also provide visibility to customers over how they obtain audit confirmation letters, which are vital to complying with audit regulations. Confirmation.com is already the preferred provider for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is endorsed by the American Bankers Association.

Anthony Browne, the Chief Executive of the BBA, said: “This safe new system will pull a key part of the auditing process into the 21st century.

“BBA Confirmations is a secure platform that will help banks, businesses, and auditors save millions of hours so they can get back to helping power the economic recovery.”

Chris Schellhorn, CEO of Confirmation.com, said: “We are seeing rapid adoption of electronic audit confirmations in the UK and are thrilled to be working with the BBA to provide secure online audit confirmations to its members.”

Samuel O’Connor, Commercial Director of Confirmation.com UK said: “BBA Confirmations is a no-brainer as it reduces the time it takes to complete an audit confirmation from several weeks to a few days and eliminates costs for all parties.”

For more information please contact the BBA press office on 0207 216 8989 or visit www.bbaconfirmations.com.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

1. The BBA is the leading trade association for the UK banking sector with more than 230 member banks headquartered in over 50 countries with operations in 180 jurisdictions worldwide. Three quarters of the world’s globally significant banks are members of the BBA. As the representative of the world’s largest international banking cluster the BBA is the voice of UK banking.
2. Confirmation.com is the world’s leading provider of secure online audit confirmations. Today, 12,000 audit firms confirm over £1 trillion annually with over 1,000 banks for 400,000 clients worldwide. Confirmation.com is used in over 100 countries by banks and companies to respond to audit confirmation requests. For more information, visit Confirmation.com.