The National Bank of Ukraine has streamlined the decision-making procedure   for maintaining the Register of accounting firms. In particular, the following changes were introduced to:

elevate decisions on whether to remove accounting firms  from the Register or to reject an application for being entered in the Register to a higher decision-making level. From now on, such decisions will be made by the NBU Board instead of the Committee on the Audit of Ukrainian Banks;

to prevent potential conflict of interests when decisions are being made by the Committee on the Audit of Ukrainian Banks; For instance, if any member of the Committee is an accounting firm’s related person, he should inform the Committee about this and withdraw from the decision-making process when the decision regarding this particular accounting firm is being made; and

to specify the time frame for the NU to make decisions related to the maintenance of the Register. Until now, the regulator has been given 15 days to review documents submitted by the accounting firm seeking to extend the validity of the Certificate beyond the expiry date. From now on, the NBU will be required to make the respective decision within 15 days.

The amendments to this effect  are approved by NBU Board  Resolution No. 58 of 27 June 2017 On Amendments to Some NBU Regulations Covering Issues of Auditing Banks, which shall come into force on the day following its official publication.

Resolution No.58 amends the Regulation On the Procedure for Maintaining the Register of Auditors Eligible to Audit Banks and the Regulation On the Committee on the Audit of Ukrainian Banks.