Exclusive: Doug Niven resurfaces as acting chair of auditing standards board

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ASIC might have shuffled its chief accountant, Doug Niven, out the door in July but the former watchdog of number crunchers has resurfaced as acting chair of the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (AUASB).

Niven spent more than 25 years with ASIC as a part of its accounting team after joining the corporate regulator as a secondee from Deloitte in 1997. He was deputy to four chief accountants prior to assuming the top job in policing the quality of audit and financial reporting.

The AUASB website shows Niven chaired his first meeting on the same day the ABC’s 7.30 raised concerns about the quality of reporting and auditing in Australia.

It seems Niven has wasted no time in getting immersed into the thick of a complex and contentious agenda with his board colleagues.

New reporting standards on sustainability, which will impose mandatory requirements on Australian entities, are set to be enforced within two years.

The auditing standards board has reviewed a draft assurance standard prepared by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board that sets general requirements for auditors providing assurance on sustainability information for issues in Australia.

That document will form the substance of an Australian assurance standard that auditors will have to use when providing a view on whether disclosures comply with new requirements.

Another first meeting duty for the former corporate cop was to preside over the review of stakeholder consultation feedback on the controversial area of going concern.

The AUASB considered a revised standard that specifies how auditors must consider whether an audit client is likely to continue operating for the foreseeable future.

Going concern was a topic that was highlighted as critical in 2020 in the report of the Inquiry into Audit Regulation conducted by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services. The government is yet to respond to its 10 recommendations.

A final item on the agenda will be of interest to the same committee because it will have one less submission to consider in its inquiry looking at firms engaged in accounting, auditing and consulting.

“The AUASB decided against developing a formal submission to the PJC Inquiry into Ethics and Professional Accountability: Structural Challenges in the Audit, Assurance and Consultancy Industry,” the AUASB update says.

Niven’s elevation to the role of acting chairman also marks the end of involvement as chairman of the audit standard-setter for Bill Edge, the long-term standard-setting enthusiast and former PwC technical and risk management partner.

Edge had been involved in audit standard-setting in various capacities over several decades.

He was involved in a landmark exercise in the ’90s called ‘The Expectation Gap’ report, which was commissioned by CPA Australia and the then Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia to improve aspects of professional regulation and conduct following the corporate collapses of the 1980s.