Other Financial Accountability Study
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Publication
Supreme Audit Institutions Independence Index: 2021 Global Synthesis Report
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-20)This report aims to inform and better equip World Bank task teams and development partners to support the strengthening of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) in client countries. It also aims to help focus the ongoing collaboration between the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institution (INTOSAI) and development agencies to address the intractable SAI independence issue. The report also responds to yearnings of several development partners to better understand the degree of SAI independence in countries and regions. -
Publication
The Next Wave of Suptech Innovation: Suptech Solutions for Market Conduct Supervision
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03-01)Around the world, financial sector supervisors are experiencing a profound shift to data-driven supervision enabled by the next wave of technology and data solutions. While technology and data are not new to financial oversight, their specific application to financial consumer protection and market conduct supervision has become more widespread and sophisticated in recent years. Expanding on the World Bank’s 2018 note on supervisory technology, or suptech, this technical note catalogues a range of specific solutions that financial authorities are deploying to help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of market conduct supervision. The note identifies four categories of suptech solutions (regulatory reporting, collection and processing of complaints data, non-traditional market monitoring, document and business analysis) and provides concrete examples of 18 different suptech solutions for market conduct supervision, drawing from the experiences of 14 financial sector authorities worldwide. The note also discusses implementation considerations and enablers of successful suptech adoption commonly experienced across countries. -
Publication
Anticorruption Initiatives: Reaffirming Commitment to a Development Priority
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-20)Corruption continues to have a disproportionate impact on the poor and most vulnerable, increasing the cost of, and reducing access to, health, education, justice, electricity and other basic services, thereby exacerbating inequality. It reduces private investment as it increases risks for investors, with consequent effects on growth and jobs. It distorts public spending decisions and weakens the quality of public investments as substandard infrastructure gets built and the regulatory systems for quality control and safety are bypassed. It erodes public trust in governments, undermining their legitimacy and posing a threat to peace and stability. This paper draws on these lessons and proposes a new approach, both in terms of what we work on and how we work, focusing on initiatives to be led by the Bank’s EFI vice presidency to reaffirm the Bank’s commitment to anticorruption. The initiatives refresh approaches that are showing results, scale up those that are emerging and show promise, or experiment and innovate where fresh thinking is needed in our support to client countries to help them control corruption. In this note, corruption is seen as both a symptom of underlying governance challenges and a problem in and of itself. For practical purposes, and to keep the focus on corruption, the initiatives do not expound on the many aspects of governance that influence corruption. The paper also does not focus on efforts to control corruption risk in World Bank operations, but rather focus on the support that the EFI Vice Presidency will provide to countries in their efforts to control corruption. -
Publication
Inclusive and Effective Citizen Engagement: Participatory Budgeting--Makueni and West Pokot Counties
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-05-01)The introduction of citizen engagement into law is an idea that is gaining popularity around the world. New provisions in Kenya’s Constitution enshrine openness, accountability, and public participation as guiding principles for public financial management. Yet, translating participation laws into meaningful action on the ground is no simple task. With support from the Kenya participatory budgeting initiative (KPBI), and the commitment from West Pokot and Makueni County leaders, PB is being tested as a way to achieve more inclusive and effective citizen engagement processes while complying with national legal provisions. This report describes the PB approach being adopted by Makueni and West Pokot counties. It seeks to provide detailed information on the step by step process that the two Counties have adopted and describes the support provided by the KPBI. At the national level, the report is mostly targeted towards PB practitioners and county officials interested in introducing PB as part of their budgeting cycle. The report seeks also to inform a wider audience of PB and citizen engagement practitioners on the Kenyan experience to date. -
Publication
Strengthening Oversight: Improving the Quality of Statutory Audits in the Philippines
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-05)Since 2003, the Philippines have been striving to implement reforms aimed at improving audit quality. Oversight of the audit profession is a key control over the financial reporting architecture of a country’s private sector. A Quality Assurance Review system over audit practitioners is a subset of oversight which serves as a key monitoring control over the integrity of financial reporting. In keeping with the country’s strategic priority of boosting private sector development by improving the investment climate for firms of all sizes, including greater access to finance, legislation was enacted to support the objective of increasing the integrity of private sector financial reporting through improved audit quality. Accordingly, the Board of Accountancy was mandated with the power to conduct oversight into the quality of audits of financial statements through a review of the quality control measures instituted by auditors in order to ensure compliance with the accounting and auditing standards and practices. . However, the injunction remains in place and, accordingly, implementation of the mandated Quality Assurance Review Program may not move forward. Several concrete steps should be taken in order to effectively move forward with the rollout of a comprehensive system of public oversight including audit quality assurance in the Philippines. These include (1) reforming the legal framework to establish an effective audit oversight system with sufficient legal power and authority (2) rationalizing the statutory audit threshold to minimize the conditions contributing to low quality audits, (3) building support among key stakeholder groups by properly addressing their concerns to the extent possible, (4) ensuring coordination of efforts among regulators to eliminate gaps and overlaps and foster collaboration among the group, and (5) establishing a dedicated Project Management Office to oversee the rollout of a Quality Assurance Review Program over audit practitioners. -
Publication
Croatia’s EU Accession: Case Studies on Reform and the Transposition of the Community Acquis
(World Bank, Vienna, 2016)Croatia, a founding member of the former Republic of Yugoslavia and a current member of the European Union (EU), is a high-income country in Europe and Central Asia. Given that high quality financial reporting promotes good corporate governance, reduces uncertainty and risk, can help to lower the cost of capital, and boosts investor confidence, it will play a critical role in the country’s strategy to champion private sector led growth for economic development. Croatia’s preparation to join the EU required reform of its corporate financial reporting framework and practices, among other things, and laid the foundation for enhanced financial reporting and increased transparency. Although the country’s accession to the EU on July 1, 2013 was a single historical point in time, it encapsulated years of transformation of the statutory and institutional framework in every aspect of the economic, social, and political spheres of the country. The purpose of this report, which focuses on Croatia’s adoption and implementation of the corporate financial reporting aspects of the acquis’, company law, is to enhance understanding of how successful transitions work in practice, that is, what makes some reforms succeed where others fail. It attempts to answer questions such as: what happens when countries adopt international standards; what issues arise when one tries to merge differing legal traditions; how to achieve reform when there are capacity constraints and key implementing institutions are missing; what are the different strategies that can be used during various phases of a reform process; and, more generally, what factors encourage failure or lead to success? -
Publication
Strengthening Financial Reporting Regimes and the Accountancy Profession and Practices in Selected Caribbean Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06-26)The main objectives of this report are to: (a) provide a synthesized analysis of financial reporting and auditing standards and practices across the countries in which the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean (ICAC) is active and (b) provide a basis for recommendations to ICAC and respective national institutes for a regional strategy to enhance the accounting profession and the accounting and auditing practices in the public and private sectors. This report’s focus on reforms and identification of areas and means to strengthen the accounting profession have at their root the conviction that systemic enhancements to the standards and practices of the profession can materially improve the lives of the region’s populace, particularly its less prosperous citizens, through greater transparency, strengthened economic growth and its attendant employment and tax revenue prospects, and greater access to financing for and formalization of the region’s dominant sector-micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). The report finds that a constraint limiting both investment across the region, particularly to MSMEs that characterize the respective national economies, and the efficient use of public resources is the accounting and auditing practices and the financial reporting regimes that prevail in both the public and private sectors. This finding emerges from: (i) a review of Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes for Accounting and Auditing (ROSC AA) conducted by the World Bank for Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, and the countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, and (ii) Bank missions to those countries updating the ROSC findings as well as missions to countries that have not yet had ROSC AA reviews (during which the Bank team met the national accountancy body, regulators of entities that fall within the financial reporting chain, supreme audit institutions, central banks, and so forth so as to secure information that would typically be found in formal ROSC AA reports).