A webinar titled Statutory Bank Branch Audit was organised for CA students by Nagpur Branch of WICASA of ICAI, in association with Akola & Amravati Branches of WICASA of ICAI to update the students about the various provisions, intricacies and challenges faced while performing Bank Branch Audit.
CA Swapnil Agrawal, Past Chairman of Nagpur Branch and the Chief Guest of the webinar emphasized on the importance of technology in the day to day working and the practicalities one may face during bank audits in the pandemic situation. He said that the CA students going on bank audits this year have to understand the responsibility assigned with performing Bank Audits this year. It is an opportunity as well as challenge in itself to audit a bank branch within a short span of time which does thousands of transactions throughout the year. One can master this Bank Audit by doing meticulous planning of the audit and with an efficient knowledgeable taskforce.
He also said that one must have a curious mindset while doing bank audit. He welcomed all the speakers and thanked the organizers for having such an informative session. CA Jiten Saglani, Chairman of Nagpur Branch of WICASA, welcomed the Chief Guest and speakers of the session and emphasised on how important, in our field of CAs is, to stay updated. He guided the students to stay updated with the latest information, norms and circulars issued by the authorities. He also stated that bank audit is a big task for CAs which is to be done in short span of time and success of it depends on performance of CA articles. So, he urged students to get insights from the webinar and get acquainted with the banking environment.
CA Saket Bagdia, Chairman of Nagpur Branch of ICAI, in his opening address to the students, stated that one should take the benefit of the session in their bank audit work. He remarked that CA Articles doing Bank Branch Audit are the eyes of Chartered Accountants. He assured the students that the faculties of the webinar are highly experienced in the field and the insights of the webinar will be useful in their audit experience. He also stated that students should maintain proper health & hygiene and care while carrying audit in pandemic. He wished everyone a happy learning and a happy bank audit season.
CA Amarjeet Singh Sandhu covered the area of “Audit of Advances†wherein he discussed the various types of advances, audit process for verification of advances and the extent to which verification to be done for determining the efficacy of internal control procedures. He further explained situations that may act as early warning signals leading to frauds, some technicalities of Finacle Software and the recent circulars issued by RBI relating to advances.
CA Prashant Tidke from Pune explained the topic “IRAC Norms for NPA Provisioningâ€. He discussed the criteria for classifying assets of banks into Performing and Non-Performing Assets. He discussed the RBI Circular about COVID-19 Relief Package which talks about rescheduling of payments (Term loans and Working Capital facilities), easing of working capital financing and relaxation from classification as Special Mention Account and Non- Performing Asset. CA Ashish Badge covered “Key Aspects of LFAR†wherein he discussed LFAR structure, reporting requirements forLFAR and a detailed explanation of changed format of LFAR of Annexure II for Branch Auditors. He discussed about the practical challenges that would be faced by auditors in gathering data from bank in case they are unable to visit the branches in this pandemic situation.
CA Ninad Nandgaonkar explained the topic “Audit under CBS Environmentâ€. He discussed the role of Core Banking Solution in banking, various modules of CBS, system controls and audit checklist relating to controls. He also gave a live demo of various reports and sheets like parameter screen, CBS Architecture, IRAC Status Change Report, DP Calculation Entry Screen, etc.
CA Deepak Agrawal, Chairman of Akola Branch of WICASA and CA Pawan Jajoo, Chairman of Amravati Branch of WICASA, mentioned the significance of the session and the takeaways which would benefit the students from the session.
The session was very interactive with attendance of more than 130 students from different cities. A question answer session was also conducted at the end in which students asked their questions related to the topics and the speakers answered all of them very well.
The webinar was aptly conducted by Team WICASA Nagpur comprising Akanksha Shinde, Ameya Soman, Aviral Barange, Karan Agrawal, Karan Tajne, Radhika Taneja and Ravina Tayade. A recording of the Webinar is made available on WICASA Nagpur’s YouTube Channel.