Dubai: Abdulqader Obaid Ali, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the UAE Internal Auditors Association (UAE-IAA), has emphasized that the UAE has been leading in the Internal Auditing domain, thanks to adopting high governance and transparency standards across all its public authorities and organizations, to strengthen the economic activities and business environment.

He underscored the importance of continually upgrading the capabilities of Internal Auditors to cope with the future challenges facing the profession due to globalization and high piracy levels across all economic activities.

He voiced his views while representing the UAE IAA at the 2nd Chief Audit Executive (CAE) Forum held by the IIA-Oman under the auspices of the Sultanate’s College for Banking and Financial Studies, under the title ‘Internal Audit as an Agent of Change’.

Delivering a keynote address in his capacity as the Chief Guest to the Forum, Abdulqader Obaid Ali stressed the important role Internal Auditors play in upgrading the performance of public and private sector organizations. 

He highlighted the key future challenges facing the IA professionals in enhancing the governance standards and using and benefitting from modern applications and technologies to ensure precision and the quality of auditing processes. 

He asserted the role of Internal Auditors had not changed but got evolved and became crucially important. This requires adopting modern applications and technologies by Internal Auditors for providing companies and clients with better and highly credible auditing reports, he added.

“The industry professionals should keep themselves updated with the developments to provide an added value to their organizations in assessing risks for the benefit of the senior management, he said.

“I’ve had a fruitful meeting with my brother Muneer Al Mughairy, President IIA-Oman, and the other Chief Audit Executives (CAEs). We shared our experiences and exchanged knowledge about the best international practices in the industry. We were glad to transfer our experiences to the rest of our colleagues in other countries, especially the Sultanate of Oman that share with us the same vision on the importance of the Internal Auditing profession in the coming period.” 

The CAEs discussed the positive role Internal Auditing plays in facing the rapid technological changes and the importance of understanding the business operating environment and risks to enable Internal Auditors to become agents of change and trusted advisors to their organizations.

UAE IAA is a non-for-profit organization that had been set up in 1995 along the lines of its parent body, the Institute of Internal Auditors (The IIA Global) which has over 200,000 members from more than 190 countries. The UAE accounts for about 45 per cent of the total Internal Auditors working in the region, estimated at 7,000, of which 22 per cent are Emiratis.