One of the key challenges facing assurance providers is understanding and tackling the expectation gap in assurance. This infographic summarises some of the considerations.

1. Stakeholder expectations of:

• Audit of the financial statements (level of assurance)
• Audit / assurance outside the financial statements (scope and level)

2. Performance gap:

• What we’re supposed to do vs what gets done (evidenced by audit quality reviews by regulator)

3. What else we can do:

• Would it fix the problem?
• Define the “problem”
• Define audit quality (value of audit vs compliance with regulations or internal policies)
• What needs to change to do it?
• Available data and methodology, regulation, liability, timing, cost