CitySavings’ Internal Audit Team Achieves International Certification

CitySavings’ Internal Audit Team Achieves International Certification


WE SIMPLY GIVE OUR BEST: City Savings Bank Internal Audit Team (CSBIIAT) with (seated, L-R) FVP – Chief Auditor Anna Bella Gatbonton, President and CEO Catalino Abacan, and Director Romy Ronquillo.

City Savings Bank’s Internal Audit Team (CSBIIAT), headed by FVP-Chief Auditor Anna Bella Gatbonton, achieved an international certification by obtaining the most desired rating of “Generally Conforms” from one of the leading accounting firms in the country, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) in its External Quality Assessment concluded last November 2017.

Considered the ‘audit of all audits’, PwC assessed CSBIIAT’s adequacy and effectiveness in complying with Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the 11 Standards within the Institute of Internal Auditors’ (IIA) International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (the Standards), identified areas for improvement on both governance and performance level, reviewed the level of operational compliance of sampled internal audit engagements and internal audit teams, recommended best practices and compared efficiency and effectiveness of the team with industry and/or international practices.

For the overall benchmarking results, the team currently performs better than its peers globally and in the Asia Pacific Region. CSBIIAT outperformed its peers in three (3) of the eight (8) attributes of excellence, namely Risk Focus, Talent Model and Quality and Innovation, while performing at par in four (4) attributes, Cost Optimization, Service Culture, Stakeholder Management and Technology. As far as Business Alignment is concerned, opportunities exist to enhance working practices of CSBIIAT in order to improve overall maturity level.

Overall, stakeholders’ expectations (Insight Generator) are higher that the perceived performance and current operating practices (Problem Solver) of the team.

This achievement reaffirms the team’s conformance to global auditing standards and reassures CitySavings of international competence.