Grant Thornton is the world’s seventh largest professional services network of independent accounting and consulting firms. Working with the Australian and New Zealand member firms, Grant Thornton provides growth advisory services to mid-size business and public sector entities. Grant Thornton Australia has more than 1,200 people working in offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, while Grant Thornton New Zealand has more than 250 people across offices in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

 

Background

For companies that use financial instruments such as foreign exchange forwards, options and interest rate swaps, there’s a requirement to measure these transactions at fair value. Auditors are required to independently verify these financial instrument valuations are reasonable, as well as understand the inputs that went into the calculations. Many auditors do not have access to the tools required to value these often-complex financial instruments. If they do have access to these tools it is often a select few members of the firm who understand them and therefore it can be a very inefficient, expensive and sometimes haphazard approach to this audit checking process.

Recognising many of its clients use derivative financial instruments, Grant Thornton felt that it was important to independently verify financial instrument valuations rather than just relying on bank confirmations as bank confirmations are sometimes materially incorrect (e.g. due to data entry errors). Accordingly, Grant Thornton was looking for a cost-effective solution and found that Hedgebook met its needs.