For Audit and Risk Committees of regulated firms in the United Kingdom.

Evidence of oversight, prepared for the board.

Govaitum helps Audit and Risk Committees, and the Senior Managers (SMFs) accountable under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, see how automated systems are governed. The board is the final recipient. Implementation and steering committees support the work. The review uses documents the firm already holds.

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Why Audit and Risk Committees ask

Automated systems are already inside policies, vendor contracts and day-to-day operations. Audit and Risk Committees are asked to oversee them before the evidence is in one place. Implementation and steering committees support the preparation.

The inventory is incomplete

Systems sit inside vendor software and shared services. The register the Audit or Risk Committee sees does not match what the documents describe.

Evidence is scattered

Policies, minutes, statements of responsibilities and contracts each hold a piece. None of them, on its own, shows who is accountable.

Owners are unclear

A gap without an accountable Senior Manager under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime is a finding the Audit or Risk Committee cannot close.

The calendar does not wait

A regulatory go-live, a disclosure cycle or an audit committee date arrives whether the file is ready or not.

Why Govaitum

The review gives the Audit or Risk Committee an independent challenge of the file, ties each gap to an accountable Senior Manager under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, and is carried out by an experienced practitioner.

It is a proportionate, senior-led review that some firms use before, or alongside, formal assurance from a large firm. The senior experience brought to the review is at the level of global systemically important banks. Independence rules limit the non-audit work a statutory auditor can provide to its audit clients, particularly public interest entities.

What changes for the Audit or Risk Committee

After the engagement, the Audit or Risk Committee and the accountable Senior Managers have a single account of oversight: what is in view, who owns each gap, and what the committee should expect to see next.

01

A decision the Audit or Risk Committee can take

Findings stated plainly, with the evidence that supports them, ready for the Audit or Risk Committee rather than assembled in the room.
02

Accountability under SM&CR

Each material gap is tied to an accountable Senior Manager, with a window of 30, 60 or 90 days.
03

Evidence the firm already holds

Present, partial or missing, drawn from documents already on file. No new system is required to start.
04

A session held in person

The Audit or Risk Committee walks the material in 45 to 60 minutes. Accountable Senior Managers leave with owners and a date for the next report.

Read the full offering

Experience

Our practitioners bring more than two decades of senior experience in financial reporting, regulatory implementation, and board-facing governance across UK-regulated banking and securities groups.

Sectors

UK banks and broker-dealers; investment banking operations; asset servicing and treasury; multi-jurisdiction legal entity reporting.

Programmes

Settlement discipline and reporting continuity; impairment and financial reporting standards; sustainability and statutory disclosure; SM&CR accountability mapping.

Readers

Audit and Risk Committees and accountable Senior Managers (SMFs). Implementation and steering committees support them.

Representative engagements

Illustrative patterns from our practitioners’ work. Names, firms, and figures are omitted.

Settlement and reporting continuity

Challenge: A UK-regulated group faced a fixed regulatory go-live for settlement discipline. Failure would have interrupted high-volume client settlement flows.
Approach: Cross-business finance leadership mapped dependencies, aligned control owners under SM&CR accountability, and staged Day 1 evidence for committee review.
Outcome: Operations continued through the go-live window. Committee papers recorded named owners, residual gaps, and a 30, 60, and 90 day remediation plan. The control problem then, keeping those settlement flows running with named owners and residual gaps, is the same one firms now face as the work is automated or moved to AI.

Statutory sustainability disclosure

Challenge: A group needed a coherent accounting and disclosure framework for new sustainability reporting obligations, with uneven maturity across business lines.
Approach: Practitioners led the accounting design, coordinated specialist workstreams, and prepared board-ready narrative linking policy, data lineage, and sign-off routes.
Outcome: Day 1 reporting structure approved. Committees received a repeatable quarterly rhythm rather than a one-off project close. The control problem then, a disclosure framework and data lineage across business lines of uneven maturity, is the same one firms now face as the work is automated or moved to AI.

Impairment and reporting governance

Challenge: Financial reporting standards required firm-wide policy decisions affecting multiple regulated entities and business lines. Judgment areas needed earlier committee visibility.
Approach: Practitioners chaired a cross-entity governance forum, aligned finance and risk, and introduced shorter-cycle internal reporting supported by documented controls.
Outcome: Policy changes approved through governance channels. Boards gained structured papers on judgments and control exceptions ahead of external deadlines. The control problem then, earlier committee sight of those judgments and exceptions, is the same one firms now face as the work is automated or moved to AI.

Legal entity oversight and SM&CR evidence

Challenge: A UK banking entity needed clearer linkage between committee decisions, statements of responsibilities, and evidence held for senior manager accountability, including vendor-hosted automation.
Approach: Mapped the system inventory from existing documents, matched gaps to accountable senior managers, and structured packs for in-person committee sessions.
Outcome: Committees could trace each finding to an owner and a document set. SM&CR readers could see where evidence was strong, partial, or missing. The control problem then, linking committee decisions and statements of responsibilities to the evidence on file, is the same one firms now face as the work is automated or moved to AI.

Control environment rebuilt

Challenge: An operations team in a UK investment bank inherited a backlog, weak reconciliations and a reporting status the senior managers could not defend.
Approach: Practitioners rebuilt the control routine, set a month-end discipline and made escalation routes explicit for the managers accountable.
Outcome: The reporting status held. The committee had a stable file rather than a one-off clean-up. The control problem then, weak reconciliations and a reporting status the senior managers could not defend, is the same one firms now face as the work is automated or moved to AI.

Multi-jurisdiction entity reporting

Challenge: A group needed legal entities outside the United Kingdom to report on the same policy footing as the UK hub, without local exceptions that the audit committee could not follow.
Approach: Controllership work aligned group policy, local regulatory nuance and the papers each entity board was asked to approve.
Outcome: Entities reached an audit-ready reporting cycle. Group committees could see where local practice followed the policy and where it did not. The control problem then, local reporting exceptions the audit committee could not follow, is the same one firms now face as the work is automated or moved to AI.

How an engagement runs

1

Scoping conversation

We agree the Audit or Risk Committee, the accountable Senior Managers, the systems in view and the documents you already hold.
2

Document pass

Practitioners read the file and return a draft the owners can challenge before the meeting.
3

In-person session

The Audit or Risk Committee reviews the material together, confirms owners and sets the date of the next report.

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Clients

Govaitum is designed for firms regulated in the United Kingdom. For each firm, the intended readers are the Audit and Risk Committees and the Senior Managers accountable under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime. Implementation and steering committees are supporting users. The material is evidence of oversight that the firm already holds.

Firms

Regulated in the United Kingdom.

Readers

Audit and Risk Committees and accountable Senior Managers.

Material

Evidence of oversight the firm already holds.

Contact

Request a demonstration for an Audit or Risk Committee, or for an accountable Senior Manager. Include your name, firm and email, and a short note on the committee you have in mind.