EY announced Tuesday an investment of more than $1 billion in a next generation assurance technology platform – part of a sustained focus on providing high quality audits and responding rapidly to changing expectations from regulators, governments, standard setters, audit committees and boards.

The four-year investment is enabled by a wider $2.5 billion program, announced by the EY organization in September 2021, EY said in a statement.

The investment will support the integration of existing EY Assurance technologies into one seamless platform that combines the strengths of the organization’s leading-class global audit platforms and leverages advanced technologies from EY alliance partners to power a new generation of data-driven assurance services.

The program aims to build an integrated assurance technology platform facilitates transformation in three major areas: data access capabilities and advanced analytics; artificial intelligence; and the user experience.

“Advances in technology, and teaming across the EY organization will take audit quality, the scope of assurance services, and the experience for EY clients and people to the next level. I am proud that EY teams are helping companies pursue sustainable long-term value and to ultimately win even greater trust among their stakeholders,” said Marie-Laure Delarue, EY Global Vice Chair – Assurance.

The integration and transformation of assurance technology will leverage the strong foundations of EY Assurance’s existing leading-class audit technology suite, including EY Canvas – the current EY cloud based global audit platform. This platform, one of the largest business-to-business (B2B) platforms in the profession, is accessed by over 350,000 EY client users and 120,000 EY people.

The investment program will also capitalize on the suite of EY Helix global data analyzers and global audit methodology. EY teams use these analyzers to process over 680 billion lines of company financial data each year, supporting a transformation that will allow the EY organization to analyze more financial and non-financial data, leveraging new statistical and predictive analytics.

These enhanced capabilities and globally consistent methods aim to facilitate advanced risk identification and mitigation and help prepare for the complex needs of expanding assurance services, and help businesses to build further trust across the capital markets.

“This investment supports the delivery of data-driven audits and other assurance services, and ultimately provides a new level of capabilities to significantly improve the user experience. This transformation responds to audit committee and finance leaders’ expectations that now encompass not just audit and accounting, but also the broader reporting landscape including sustainability,” said Marc Jeschonneck, EY Global Assurance Digital Leader.

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