PwC has won the 2019 Audit Innovation of the Year award from the International Accounting Bulletin (IAB). The award for Cash.ai, which automates the audit of cash, was presented to Gary Rapsey, PwC’s Global Assurance Chief Innovation Officer, at The Digital Accountancy Forum & Awards held in London on 3 October.
Judges were looking for new innovations with the potential to improve efficiency, audit quality and stakeholder satisfaction as well as the potential to enhance the relevance and value of assurance services.
Cash.ai uses AI to automatically read, understand and test client documents including reported cash balances, bank reconciliations, bank confirmation letters, foreign exchange and the financial condition of the bank – in essence, the complete audit of cash.
Cash.ai is the first working module towards a fully AI-enabled audit and takes audit quality and efficiency to a new level by standardising the approach and harnessing intelligent automation. Cash.ai has so far been piloted in four countries. As well as improvements in quality and reliability, clients are benefitting from a more seamless experience through automated data requests and the immediate identification of issues.
PwC partnered with a world-class, Silicon valley, AI company with Kaggle Grand Master data scientists, and London-based UI/UX designers to develop Cash.ai. The use of driverless AI (using AI to build AI), allows the development of AI algorithms quickly and accurately, and enables Cash.ai to be deployed on a global scale without the need to employ an army of data scientists.
Gary Rapsey, Global Assurance Chief Innovation Officer, said, “We are very proud to win this prestigious award. It showcases how disruptive technologies can fundamentally change the way we approach audits. And we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response to Cash.ai. We are excited by what it will do now and its potential for the future.”
James Chalmers, Global Assurance Leader, PwC, said, “The gap between what an audit delivers and what stakeholders expect has never been wider. For the audit to continue to have relevance for businesses and society, we believe that tomorrow’s audit needs to be broader, deeper and more forward looking.
“The audit of the future will involve people doing what they do best, such as applying judgement and dealing with ambiguity, and machines will do what they do best, such as processing, reviewing and testing huge quantities of data. Cash.ai demonstrates our commitment to investing in technologies to keep the audit fit for purpose and relevant for the future.”
