Audits of Employee Benefit Plans Subject to ERISA

Auditing employee benefit plans

Employee benefit plan (EBP) audit engagements continue to be scrutinized by regulators and peer reviewers due to a history of noncompliance with applicable professional standards.

You can gain the proper skills to perform EBP engagements effectively. You will learn about:

• Applicable professional standards
• ERISA and SEC requirements
• The steps of an EBP audit

Commonly audited plans

You will tap into ways to plan and conduct effective risk-based plan audits to comply with professional standards while maximizing efficiency for commonly audited types of plans, 如:

• Defined contribution plans
• Health and welfare benefit plans

Applied learning

You will do a deep dive into EBP auditing by working through the plan audit process from engagement acceptance through the archive.

This course provides 1 CPE in 会计 and 11.5 CPE in Auditing.

Who Will Benefit

• Auditors of employee benefit plans
• Practitioners considering adding EBP audits as a service offering
• Accountants in business and industry responsible for company benefits

Key Topics

• Audit planning and pre-engagement activities
• Risk assessment, including consideration of internal control
• Auditing the statement of net assets available for benefits
• Auditing the statement of changes in net assets available for benefits
• Other auditing considerations, including prohibited transactions and tax compliance
• The auditor’s report
• Financial statement disclosures
• Supplemental schedules

Learning Outcomes

• Recognize key terms and definitions related to ERISA plans.
• Identify the different types of employee benefit plans (EBPs).
• Recognize operational and compliance elements of ERISA plans
• Identify the basic financial statements for all ERISA plans.
• Recognize differences between GAAP and ERISA 报告.
• Identify the risks of material misstatement related to financial statement line items on the statements of net assets available for benefits.
• Recognize audit procedures commonly performed in a defined contribution retirement plan (DC plan) audit, including notes receivable from plan participants.
• Identify audit requirements when using the work of a specialist.