3 questions to Jean-François Serval on the Paris meeting of the Forum of Firms

The Forum of Firms (FOF) met in Paris at the Palais des Congrès on 4 and 5 November, with ESG implementation as its central theme. As part of IFAC (International Federation of Accountants), the FOF brings together firms that perform international audits. The objective of the Forum is to promote consistent, high quality standards of financial reporting and audit practice throughout the world. Groupe Audit Serval & Associés is a member of the FOF. As such, its Chairman Jean-François Serval attended the Paris meetings. In this interview, he shares his thoughts with us at the end of two particularly intense days of discussion.

 What does membership of the FOF mean for an audit firm?
To be a member of the FOF is to undertake to respect all the codes of ethics of the profession, as defined by IFAC. These codes, which are normally transposed into the domestic law of each country with a professional organisation (around 200 countries), take precedence over domestic law.
To become a member of the FOF, you must appear before a committee that checks and validates your operational procedures. It guarantees compliance with the principles of good conduct. Groupe Audit Serval & Associés is proud to be one of the 32 international firms that belong to the FOF. These principles are simple in theory, and involve :

• An audit method documented by procedures that must be validated with the competent authorities.
• Professional doubt as the foundation of our operational approach.
• An ethical line of conduct that must be confirmed in the behaviour of professionals.
• Independence from the people and realities being audited.
• Authenticated or authenticatable accounting documents recognising the continuity of time in all entries.
  These principles of good conduct are in addition to the general principles of accounting, such as the double entry or the recording of work carried out in time and with the appropriate qualifications. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues, through ESG (Environment, Social and Governance), are now an integral part of the audit process.
• What are the key messages to be drawn from the major themes discussed on 4 and 5 November? ?
  The FOF meetings included some brilliant presentations by Forvis Mazars. These presentations clarified the scope of ESG certificates and recalled, in the context of ESG, the notion of "group" and added value, which includes all participants in the value chain produced by a company (its customers and suppliers) and subjected them to ESG tests on governance and environmental issues.
  The most interesting part of the presentation was the lexicon and table of ESG tests used to integrate the parent company financial statements by "assessing" assets and liabilities in the light of ESG requirements, so that the audited company's image is consistent through the implementation of its criteria.
   How do you see audit and accountancy firms developing over the next few years?
  In the years to come, with the diversity of human resources, efficiency and productivity will increase like digital security, framed by relevant and stable financial results to become comparable.
  One issue that has not been addressed is that of training in the techniques for measuring the new ESG criteria, which we have already tackled with ECOBILAN and Carbone 4 and which the Compagnie des Experts Comptables is trying to address through professional training programmes.
  Groupe Audit Serval & Associés is mobilising to keep pace with the new CSR environment. A partner from Groupe Audit France, Fatoumata Niakate, is in charge of supporting the firm's ESG development. Fatoumata Niakate's extensive experience as a chartered accountant and auditor, and her early commitment to CSR issues, underline Groupe Audit's determination to support its clients as closely as possible to their needs, by offering them the best expertise, in line with the firm's approach, which is heir to the Constantin Group's reputation for excellence.
  Our firm is already operational in the ESG field. Our Mulhouse office, Fidurévision, has set up a CSR approach as part of a support partnership that enables us to offer our clients technical expertise, such as carbon assessments, which require very specific skills, and to monitor governance requirements, particularly in the social field.