In last week’s blog, we looked at three common credit union audit risks. In this week’s blog, we’d like to offer two ways to mitigate those risks.

In case you don’t want to read the whole blog from last week, we’ll give you the highlights. The three biggest audit risks concern the following:

• Reviewing and storing information
• Staying on track through remediation
• Taking too much time to complete the audit

Of course, these aren’t the only risks credit unions face during audits. But they are among the more common. And, most importantly, they’re risks to which even the strongest credit union audit teams occasionally fall victim.

So, we’d like to introduce a couple ways to deal with those risks.

1.  Use a Credit Union Audit Checklist

Don’t use just any audit checklist! Use one specific to credit unions. This will ensure that the items you need to prepare are on the checklist.

One of the benefits of using a good audit checklist is that it keeps things predictable. First, it gets everyone on the audit team on the same page about what to contribute. Then, very importantly, an audit checklist establishes consistent internal procedures that you can use every time you perform an audit.

Putting together audit checklists isn’t the fastest or easiest thing in the world. You can put together your own based on your audit practices. Or, if you don’t want to develop your own, you can use our credit union audit checklist with no obligation.

2.  Leverage Automation in Your Audit Process

Unfortunately, there’s just no way to automate the entire audit process. Not yet. On that day, we’ll join the rest of you in breathing a giant sigh of relief.

Until then, there are some areas of your audit process that you can automate. For all the checklists, manual processes, building audit trails, sending reminders, storing documents, and so on, there’s a computer that do it for you. Or, if it can’t do it for you, it can facilitate the fast and error-free completion thereof.

Computers never forget to run a task, and they’re curiously impervious to human error. Bringing automation into the audit process is a sure way to save time, keep people on track, and keep information accessible.

FREE: Audit Checklist for Credit Unions

4 key principles and 9 questions to jumpstart your audit planning. From leading credit unions.

Final Thoughts

These are only two suggestions for how to avoid risks during your credit union’s audit process. There are many more audit best practices out there. And, if you’ve been following our blog, then you’ve probably read about more than a few of them.

If you haven’t been following our blog, then now’s your chance! Subscribe!

Or, if you’d like to navigate the site on your own, try the links we’ve included below.

HOW TO PREPARE FOR AN AUDIT: 11 AUDIT EFFICIENCY TIPS FOR CREDIT UNIONS

HOW THE NCUA AIRES QUESTIONNAIRES CAN HELP YOUR CREDIT UNION PREPARE FOR YOUR NEXT REGULATORY EXAMINATION