External-Audit Evidence Recovery Leader — International Banking

The mandate

The bank’s audit coordination head was removed after repeated requests circulated among Product Control, Credit, Treasury and Technology without an accountable response or preserved management conclusion. The auditor has escalated evidence delays around valuation, expected loss, legal entities and system-generated reports. Reporting dates remain achievable only if management regains ownership instead of treating the audit portal as a project tracker.

The interim must start within ten days for eight months, spanning request triage, year-end fieldwork, issue closure, committee reporting and successor induction. Recruitment begins after the critical evidence backlog is bounded. Four weeks are protected for overlap; the role will not extend for control redesign unrelated to audit findings, systems replacement or regulatory remediation outside financial reporting.

Handover requires every high-risk request to resolve to management assertion, source population, preparer, reviewer, accounting position, audit exchange and retained final evidence; all aged priority items need disposition; and two reporting cycles must run without orphaned requests. The successor must chair an unseen scope change and contradictory-evidence event with residual audit matters accepted.

The leader may set response priorities, reject incomplete evidence, require executive ownership, freeze conflicting submissions, allocate the approved CHF14 million recovery and appoint temporary coordinators. Management retains accounting and representation decisions; the Audit Committee resolves escalation; external auditors choose procedures and conclusions. The interim cannot direct audit work, negotiate an opinion, waive controls, hire permanently or exceed delegation.

Preparation of audit workpapers on behalf of the auditor, remediation unrelated to cited findings and defence of management positions without source evidence are outside scope. The leader may coordinate specialists but cannot blur who prepared, reviewed or independently tested an item. Recovery is bounded to management evidence, timely resolution, transparent disagreement and permanent audit-coordination capability.

Why this seat is open

Removal of the coordination head followed a pattern in which administrative closure hid unresolved ownership and inconsistent evidence. The audit timetable cannot wait for permanent recruitment. Temporary authority is needed to restore management accountability and clear the reporting cycle while protecting the auditor’s ability to challenge every conclusion independently.

What you will own

• Triage requests by financial-statement assertion, materiality, audit dependency, evidence readiness, owner and decision date.
• Decide which submissions are complete, require management correction, need specialist review or must remain openly unresolved.
• Reconcile competing evidence across ledgers, models, source systems, legal documents, committee papers and subsequent events.
• Establish one retained chain from initial request through management conclusion, revisions, audit challenge and final delivered support.
• Command scenarios for scope expansion, late sample, contradictory source, changed estimate, unavailable owner and portal failure.
• Report backlog, ageing, blocked judgement, repeated request and closure quality to the Controller and Audit Committee.
• Transfer command after two cycles and successor completion of unseen scope and evidence-conflict exercises.

Candidate qualifications

• Held executive external-audit coordination or group reporting authority in a globally regulated bank during year-end fieldwork.
• Recovered high-risk evidence across valuation, expected credit loss, treasury, legal entities and system-generated reports.
• Distinguished administrative request closure from management assertion, sufficient evidence and independent auditor acceptance.
• Escalated unresolved positions transparently without pressuring auditors, coaching responses or compromising professional scepticism.
• Led large preparer and reviewer networks across products, countries, specialists and shared services under fixed deadlines.
• Handed sustainable audit coordination to permanent leadership through live cycles and adversarial evidence events.

Non-negotiables

• Available within ten days for exclusive Zurich service through year-end fieldwork and two reporting cycles.
• Has controlled external-audit evidence in a major bank; generic PMO or audit-firm experience alone is insufficient.
• No undisclosed relationship with the appointed audit firm, material valuation provider or management adviser involved.
• Will preserve auditor independence and unresolved management evidence even where timetable or opinion pressure intensifies.

1. 49 words maximum. State your Zurich availability and one audit backlog you converted from tracking into accountable evidence.
2. 49 words maximum. How did you resolve contradictory source records without coaching management toward an auditor-preferred answer?
3. 49 words maximum. Which unseen scope change would qualify the permanent audit-coordination leader?