Transparency

Message from our Leader

Proud in Pro’s role as auditors is to strengthen trust in the information that underpins capital markets—ensuring its accuracy, reliability, and consistency. As stakeholder expectations evolve and information becomes more complex, we are committed to increasing confidence in our auditing process.

This Transparency Report offers a comprehensive view of our System of Quality Management (SOQM), key transparency metrics, and how we deliver on our audit quality objectives. It explains how we manage and oversee quality processes, the actions we take to continuously enhance quality, and the outcomes of our internal audit quality reviews and inspections. The report also outlines our governance approach, codes of conduct, commitment to ethical behaviour, and the standards, policies, and procedures that we expect all our partners and staff to follow and comply with.

We hope this report demonstrates and reflects our ongoing commitment to provide stakeholders and the public with meaningful insights into our efforts toward high and sustainable quality.

Our approach to quality

International Standards on Quality Management 1 (ISQM 1)

In December 2020, the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) approved and released three new and revised standards that strengthen and modernise a firm’s approach to quality management, including ISQM 1. This standard, which became effective on 15 December 2022, required all firms to have designed and implemented the requirements of the standard and evaluate their SOQM under the new standard by 15 December 2023.

ISQM 1 is an objectives-based approach that expects firms to have a system of quality management (SOQM) that operates in a continuous and iterative manner taking into consideration the conditions, events, circumstances, actions and inactions that impact a firm. It enhances the firm’s responsibilities around monitoring and remediation, emphasising the need for more proactive, real-time monitoring of the SoQM, a more effective, efficient, and timely root cause analysis process, and timely and effective remediation of deficiencies.

ISQM 1 states that the objective of the firm is to design, implement and operate an SOQM that provides the firm with reasonable assurance that:

• The firm and its personnel fulfil their responsibilities in accordance with professional standards and applicable legal and regulatory requirements, and conduct engagements in accordance with such standards and requirements, and
• Engagement reports issued by the firm or engagement partners are appropriate in the Circumstances

The standard goes on to say that the public interest is served by the consistent performance of quality

Our system of quality management

Our system of quality management (SOQM) must be designed, implemented and operating on an ongoing basis to achieve the quality objectives. This ongoing process includes monitoring, assessing, evaluating, reporting, and being responsive to changes in quality risks, driven by the firm’s internal and external environment.

Our focus on quality management is therefore not to apply prescribed rules but rather to design and implement risk responses which are fit for purpose to manage the risks we identify in our own risk assessment and achieve the quality objective taking into consideration the conditions, events, circumstances, actions and/or inactions that may impact our SOQM. The past several years have seen unprecedented challenges and our firm’s SOQM has helped us navigate and react to the impact that identified factors had on our ability to achieve the overall assurance quality objective – delivering quality audit engagements.

Our commitment to quality

Our purpose and values are the foundation of our success. Our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems, and our values help us deliver on that purpose. Our purpose reflects ‘why’ we do what we do, and our strategy provides us with the ‘what’ we do. ‘How’ we deliver our purpose and strategy is driven by our culture, values and behaviours. This forms the foundation of our system of quality management and permeates how we operate, including guiding our leadership actions, and how we deliver trust.

Quality awareness channels include:

• Face-to-face or virtual sessions with partners and managers through quarterly updates and town hall meetings
• Learning and development programmes, such as Assurance core curricula, training programmes provided to partners, methodology workshops, soft skills training and digital training
• eLearning courses
• Periodic alerts, emails and communication from our leaders

Leadership’s commitment to quality

Our firmwide and assurance priorities always include a quality agenda, demonstrating that we consider quality as an important part of our business operation and aim to balance commercial interests with quality and compliance. The quality performance also forms part of the Recognition and Accountability Framework for our partners. Culture and behaviours are a key focus area in our root cause analysis. The mindset of those performing the root cause analysis is to seek potential causal factors related to culture and behaviours. If no potential causal factors are identified, the Partner team usually questions whether their analysis has gone deep enough. In addition, the Partner team considers and assesses root causes that may result in difficult business or leadership decisions including client selection, and partner and staff capacity and workload.

Ethics, independence and objectivity

At Proud in Pro, we adhere to the fundamental principles of ethics set out in the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants, which are:

1. Integrity –to be straightforward and honest in all professional and business relationships.
2. Objectivity –to not allow bias, conflict of interest or undue influence of others to override professional or business judgments.
3. Professional Competence and Due Care –to maintain professional knowledge and skill at the level required to ensure that a client or employer receives a competent professional service based on current developments in practice, legislation and techniques, and to act diligently and in accordance with applicable technical and professional standards.
4. Confidentiality –to respect the confidentiality of information acquired as a result of professional and business relationships and, therefore, not disclose any such information to third parties without proper and specific authority, unless there is a legal or professional right or duty to disclose, nor use the information for the personal advantage of the professional accountant or third parties.
5. Professional Behaviour –to comply with relevant laws and regulations and avoid any action that discredits the profession.

Client and Engagement Acceptance and Continuance

Proud in Pro has a process in place to identify acceptable clients based on audit client acceptance and continuance system. Acceptance facilitates a determination by the engagement team, business management and risk management of whether the risks related to an existing client or a potential client are manageable, and whether or not Proud in Pro should be associated with the particular client and its management.

Engagement Performance

Our firm established the Audit Manual based on Thai Standard on Auditing. Audit Manual addressed include:

• How engagement teams are briefed on the engagement to obtain an understanding of the objectives of their work.
• Processes for complying with applicable engagement standards.
• Processes of engagement supervision, staff training and coaching.
• Methods of reviewing the work performed, the significant judgments made and the form of report being issued.
• Appropriate documentation of the work performed and of the timing and extent of the review.
• Processes to keep all policies and procedures current.

Engagement Quality Reviewer (EQR)

As part of our SOQM and in line with professional standards, a EQR is assigned to higher risk clients, such as listed entities, high-profile clients and clients preparing for an initial public offering. The Assurance Leader appoints EQRs in consultation with the Assurance Risk Management partner. EQRs must have sufficient technical knowledge, appropriate experience, industry expertise, time and authority. They must be able to objectively evaluate an engagement team’s significant judgments and conclusions. EQRs are involved in the most critical aspects of the audit. For example, they may advise on matters of firm independence, risks of material financial statement misstatement and a team’s responses to those risks, and specific accounting, auditing, financial reporting and disclosure issues. EQRs have access to real-time review findings, which allows them to monitor audit quality and follow up on issues with audit teams.

Differences of opinion

Protocols exist to resolve situations where a difference of opinion arises between the engagement leader and either the EQR, another Assurance partner or technical support teams. Resolution protocols include the use of technical panels consisting of partners independent of the engagement.

Professional development

We are committed to putting the right people in the right place at the right time. Throughout our people’s careers, they are presented with career development opportunities, including classroom, virtual classroom and on-demand learning, and on-the-job real time coaching and development. Our flexible training portfolio facilitates personalised learning with access to a variety of educational materials, including articles, videos, and courses. Achieving a professional credential supports our firm’s commitment to quality through consistent examination and certification standards. Our goal is to provide our staff with a more individualised path to promotion and support them in prioritising and managing their time more effectively when preparing for professional exams. Providing our people with the ability to meet their professional and personal commitments is a critical component of our people experience and retention strategy

Confidentiality and information security

Confidentiality and information security are key elements of our professional responsibilities. Misuse or loss of confidential client information or personal data may expose the firm to legal proceedings, and it may also adversely impact our reputation. We take the protection of confidential and personal data very seriously. Our focus on our clients requires a holistic and collaborative approach to reducing security, privacy and confidentiality risks with significant investment in appropriate controls and monitoring.

Monitoring assurance quality

We recognise that quality in the assurance services we deliver to clients is key to maintaining the confidence of investors and other stakeholders in the integrity of our work. It is a key element to our assurance strategy.

Responsibility for appropriate quality management lies with the leadership of Proud in Pro. This includes the design and operation of an effective System of Quality Management (SOQM) that is responsive to our specific risks to delivering quality audit engagements.

Inspections

Our quality of firm is reviewed by in-house [Annually], outsources [Case by Case consideration], network [Every 3-5 years] and regulator such as Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand (SEC) [Every 3-5 years].

Review and Inspection results

The firm is inspected both firm level and engagement level by the results as “Acceptable”.