Nagpur Branch of WIRC of ICAI organised a full day physical seminar on Bank Branch Audit on 25th Mar 2022 wherein Regional Head of Canara Bank CA Sunil Kotiyan was chief guest and four distinguished speakers CA Shriniwas Joshi (Past Central Council Member) & CA Abhijit Sanzgiri both from Mumbai, CA Prakash Kulkarni from Pune and CA Ashutosh Joshi from Nagpur deliberated on various technical topics.
CA Sunil Kotiyan, Assistant General Manager Canara Bank addressed the gathering in a very apt manner by touching upon various areas which an auditor should look upon while doing a statutory bank branch audit. He touch based upon understanding the branch business, audit planning and segregation needed while auditing various different types of branches. He further stated that there are large numbers of bank circulars issued from time to time which an auditor should review and sort out those that are relevant from the angle of statutory branch audit. Doing an audit in a time bound manner is the USP of CAs as they only have the required skill sets to handle the humungous bank audit work by putting to use their analytical & information technology skill sets. Further the number of branches under audit has gone down drastically after the recent circular by RBI which asks banks to cover 80% of total advances for audit and this has drastically reduced the number of branches to be audited stated CA Kotiyan. He highlighted that the Chartered Accountants are not just compliance partners but act as a growth catalyst and by performing statutory, concurrent and various other auditing and consulting engagements, they certainly add value to the bank.CA Kotiyan quoted many other crucial areas pertaining to moratorium, appropriation of recovery of dues and accounting policies followed by bank, RBI dashboard pertaining to Covid related guidelines, MSME Udyam registration, credit card loans and its impact, harmonization of customer ids, to name a few.
“A single conversation with the experts in the field of banking is like reading lot of books” says CA Jitendra Saglani, Chairperson Nagpur Branch. He welcomed all the esteemed dignitaries of the program and stated that bank audits are the most crucial engagements for a practicing Chartered Accountant and to execute this engagement diligently with utmost professionalism and knowledge is the purpose of organizing this seminar. He further stated that banking is one field which is very diverse and there are various dimensions while Chartered Accountants perform their role as a Branch Auditors. Continuous updation of knowledge through program like is the goal of hosting this seminar on bank audit.
CA Abhijit Kelkar, Regional Council Member in his brief remarks, congratulated the newly elected managing committee of Nagpur branch for organizing this full day seminar in physical mode after a large gap. Further bank audits are one of the core areas for a small practitioner and with passage of time, we need to keep updating ourselves and hence this full day seminar is of utmost relevance and importance. Further the coverage of seminar is diverse and the learned speakers are domain experts in their areas and they will certainly deal in their topic and answer the doubts of members in most eloquent manner. He wished all the delegates very fruitful learning throughout the day.
On this occasion the learned speaker CA Shriniwas Joshi spoke on the topic – Long Form Audit Report wherein he covered the important points wherein the auditor needs to be very specific in their comments and that these reports are referred by central auditors very seriously while finalizing the audit. CA Abhijit Sanzgiri covered the area of Risk Management in bank audits and he stated the various risks auditors face in certifying the reports and annexures while attesting the branch audit functions. CA Prakash Kulkarni covered agricultural advances topic which was very relevant considering the rural branches in the Vidarbha region and various key circulars and notification issued by RBI from time to time so that these advances can be appropriately classified. CA Ashutosh Joshi deliberated on IRAC norms and NPA Provisioning and he covered various situations wherein the income recognition and asset classification differs and accordingly an auditor needs to comprehend and report.
The program was aptly organized and attended by more than 150 Chartered Accountants. CA Sanjay M Agrawal, Vice Chairperson coordinated the inaugural session and CA Akshay Gulhane, Secretary proposed vote of thanks. CA Dinesh Rathi – Treasurer, CA Ajay Vaswani, CA Sanjay C Agrawal and CA Swaroopa Wazalwar Managing Committee Members coordinated the technical sessions. Prominently present on the occasion were CA Deepak Jethwani, CA Trupti Bhattad, CA Julfesh Shah, CA Maheshkumar Rathi, CA Satish Sarda, CA Swapnil Agrawal & CA Saket Bagdia.
