KPMG Webcast on Modernizing SOX Controls
KPMG US announced a webcast on how external‑audit tools are reshaping internal controls and the three lines of defense, signalling a push to modernize SOX testing and control automation. The webcast frames external‑audit technology as a factor changing how internal audit and finance coordinate controls. (x.com)
KPMG is using its next Sarbanes-Oxley webcast to argue that audit technology is now changing how companies design and test internal controls. (kpmg.com) The webcast, “Revolutionizing Internal Controls,” is scheduled for April 30, 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time and offers 1.5 continuing professional education credits for live participants. KPMG says Sue King and Steve Estes, its United States Sarbanes-Oxley solution leaders, will lead the session. (kpmg.com) KPMG says the session will focus on automation, analytics, artificial intelligence, and “Agentic AI,” which it describes as tools that can support continuous monitoring, efficiency, and risk mitigation in control programs. The firm also says attendees will get strategies for using those tools across all three lines of defense: operating management, risk and compliance teams, and internal audit. (kpmg.com) Sarbanes-Oxley controls are the checks companies use to support financial reporting, and KPMG has spent at least the past two years framing those controls as a technology problem as much as an accounting one. In a September 26, 2024 webcast, KPMG said external auditors were already using generative artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, and transaction scoring in audit procedures. (kpmg.com) By April 15, 2025, KPMG had shifted that message deeper into finance operations, with a webcast on “The Intelligent Close” that linked automated controls in the accounting close to the way first-line teams run Sarbanes-Oxley processes. That page said earlier discussions about auditor automation were already affecting the design and execution of first- and second-line controls and management testing. (kpmg.com) KPMG’s own survey material shows why firms keep returning to the topic. In a 2022 webcast summary, KPMG said governance, risk, and compliance tool use rose to 69 percent in 2022 from 41 percent in 2016, while 85 percent of organizations said their external auditor relied on their work, up from 41 percent in 2016. (kpmg.com) That same summary said manual controls fell 31 percent over the 2016-to-2022 period, while information-technology-dependent controls increased 28 percent. KPMG also said 63 percent of respondents reported that external auditors relied on 21 percent to 60 percent of their operating-effectiveness testing. (kpmg.com) The April 30 session fits that pattern: auditors are using more software to test transactions, finance teams are automating more of the close, and internal audit is being asked to produce work that outside auditors can reuse. KPMG’s webcast language says the result is a push to redesign controls, not just document them. (kpmg.com) KPMG is also tying that redesign to newer artificial-intelligence tools, including systems that can monitor activity continuously instead of waiting for quarterly testing cycles. The firm says the point of the webcast is to show how those tools can be used “responsibly” as companies prepare internal audit and assurance functions for a more automated control environment. (kpmg.com)
