Audit of financial statements of banks

The conduct of audit of financial statements of banks is regulated in detail by:

• Law on Accounting and Audit
• Law on Banks 
• Decision on External Audit of Banks 

Below is the summary information contained in the above regulations.

The National Bank of Serbia determines and publishes the list of external auditors eligible to perform audit of financial statements of banks. In order to be included in the list, an external auditor must meet the following criteria:

• comply with the conditions prescribed for an audit firm by the law governing audit,
• employ at least six certified auditors licensed to perform audit of financial statements, at least three of whom have a minimum three-year work experience in auditing financial statements of banks,
• employ at least 20 staff members in the organisational unit responsible for audit operations,
• the audit firm must not have been removed from the list based on Section 5, paragraph 4 of the Decision on External Bank Audit in the last five years.

In order to be included in the list, the audit firm shall submit to the National Bank of Serbia a written request together with supporting documentation to prove compliance with the above criteria. The National Bank of Serbia shall make a decision on the request within 30 days after receipt of the duly completed request. The National Bank of Serbia shall publish the list on its website.

A listed external auditor may not, in the course of the same year, engage in auditing of financial statements of a bank and provide it with consultancy services, nor conduct an audit of financial statements for the year during which such services were provided. A bank may not appoint an external auditor that generated more than a half of its total income in the previous year from auditing the accounts of that bank. The external auditor may conduct no more than five consecutive audits of regular annual financial statements of the bank. Furthermore, the external auditor may not conduct an audit of financial statements of a bank for the year in which one of its employees was temporarily hired to work in, or by which he/she was temporarily hired at the time of conducting the audit. Should audit be performed by the external auditor which is not in the list, and/or if the audit was conducted in breach of the provisions of the Law on Banks and other regulations, the National Bank of Serbia shall not accept the audit report.

The audit report includes:

• external auditor’s opinion,
• audited financial statements,
• opinion on compliance of business reports with financial statements for the same business year and the business report that was subject to this opinion,
• letter on financial statement presentation, and
• analyses for the NBS purposes.

The bank shall submit to the National Bank of Serbia the audit report along with the management letter delivered by the external auditor upon the completion of audit, no later than 120 days after the end of the business year to which the audit report relates.

No later than 15 days from the submission of the audit report, the bank shall publish:

• complete external auditor’s report, on its website and keep it on until the publication of the auditor’s report for the next business year, and
• external auditor’s summary report in daily newspapers circulated in the territory of the Republic of Serbia.

If the National Bank of Serbia refuses to accept the external auditor’s report, the bank shall replace such report on its website with a report on a newly conducted audit prepared by another external auditor based on the new audit.