Marina

My day starts early because we often have conference calls with our Internal Audit colleagues in other regions. So given the time zone differences, calls that involve Asia and Europe are normally scheduled around 7:30 am. During the day, my agenda is always very full so I never have time to be bored! I spend time reviewing the proposed scope for selected new audits (what areas we are going to look at and which potential risks drive this choice), as well as reviewing audit findings to make sure I feel comfortable with the auditors' conclusions based on the results of their fieldwork.

I also spend a lot of time every day working on strategic projects for Internal Audit, involving the re-engineering of audit processes, audit metrics and our technology infrastructure and systems. I dedicate a significant amount of time interacting with people, either meeting with our internal clients or meetings externally with regulators and peer groups. I’m also involved in recruiting activities, as well as in mentoring and coaching our people.

An example of a project I am focused on right now? Currently, together with other senior managers in Internal Audit, I am working on our annual presentation to the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors in which we discuss our assessment of the firm's internal control structure. We invest many hours per annum testing the effectiveness and assessing the adequacy of the design of the firm's control infrastructure; each year, we issue more than 500 audit reports describing our findings. For the presentation to the Audit Committee, we bring all of these results together, identifying current external and internal operational risks, looking for control trends and themes, and assessing management responsiveness in mitigating the weaknesses we have identified.