The Swiss occupational pension supervisory commission, OAK BV, is introducing revised and binding standards for auditors of pension funds and occupational pension institutions through a directive entering into force on 1 October.

The new directive defines the minimum requirements for auditing and reporting by the auditors in order to improve the evaluation and comparison of auditors’ reports, replacing the old directive W – 04/2013 “audit and reporting by the auditors” published on 28 October 2013, the supervisor said in a note explaining the objective of the directive.

According to the minimum requirements, the audit of an annual financial statement of a pension fund is based on the Swiss auditing standards (SA-CH).

The version of the Swiss auditing standard published in July this year by the Swiss auditing association, EXPERTsuisse, and valid for an audit report, complies with the International Standards on Auditing (ISA) published in October 2018 after completion of the Auditor Reporting Project, the Disclosure Project, the NOCLAR Project and the revised ISA 540 (Revised), the association said.

The Swiss Standard for Limited Audits (SER), published by EXPERTsuisse with the trustees association Treuhand Suisse, applies instead in the case of a limited audit report.

In addition to the audit of annual financial statements, the law on occupational pensions in Switzerland requires further audit of pension funds and occupational pension institutions by applying the note PH 40 on “audit and reporting by the auditor of a pension fund”, in its version of 29 June, the regulator said.

EXPERTsuisse has revised the PH 40 audit note based on the updated Swiss auditing standards (SA-CH), OAK-BV added.

The revised standards apply for the first time to the audit of financial statements of pension funds and occupational pension institutions for periods ending on or after 15 December of this year, replacing the directive W - 04/2013 that entered into force on 9 March 2018, it added.

The new requirements apply to auditors of pension funds and of institutions providing occupational pensions.

The reporting on the audit of pension funds or occupational pension institutions contains information about the person who led the audit and professional qualifications.

It must be based on the examples of report of EXPERTsuisse that can be found in the audit note 40, version of 29 June, the regulator said.

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Luigi is IPE's Berlin-based DACH correspondent. His coverage includes regulation and the latest pensions and investments trends, and, being a native Italian, he also covers Italy’s pensions market. He has reported from Italy and Germany on international politics and business for European and US publications including USA Today, Bloomberg BNA and for the investigative magazine L’Espresso. He was previously Germany correspondent for Mergermarket covering M&A.View full Profile

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