Business Assurance Service

What is Business Assurance?

Traditional internal audit has largely been defined in terms of control, the review of controls and a focus on compliance. This traditional role has developed.

The focus on risk management has further broadened the role of internal audit to provide assurance over the way in which organisations manage the risks they face. This has meant a focus on business processes rather than systems and a clear link to the organisation's strategy and goals. This is certainly the case here at Durham.

An assurance service, therefore, needs to provide managers and stakeholders of the University with assurances that processes for managing risks faced by the University are reasonable. It cannot be the case that absolute assurance can be obtained from any assurance service. It is also the case that assurance must be provided by teams that have high quality staff and resources to provide assurance across all processes in the University including, but not limited to, traditional compliance checking of core financial and transactional systems.

The use of the term Business Assurance in this context therefore refers to this wider multi skilled assurance service.

The Accountable Officer for the University is the Vice Chancellor.