Leading the way with Ai Auditors: Themes from the Digital Accountancy Forum 2020

Yesterday saw the Digital Accountancy Forum return for the ninth year, but it was the first year our MindBridge team has been involved. The packed agenda, including a session from our Founder and Chief Impact Officer, Solon Angel and a panel discussion involving our Director of Growth Europe, Stuart Cobbe, was full of valuable insight celebrating the best and most innovative developments in modern accounting.

We were delighted to have many engaging conversations with delegates looking to find out more about MindBridge. In particular, our team spoke to numerous accounting professionals about the future of audit, what’s new in Ai Auditor, how AI can assess financial risk in times of crisis and why one of our customers, Moore Kingston Smith, a top 20 UK chartered accountancy and audit firm, is leveraging MindBridge’s Ai Auditor.

Introducing Ai Auditors 

Solon’s session, discussing how AI can help auditors to keep companies out of trouble, was quite relevant in this Covid environment. Solon talked about what it takes to be an Ai Auditor, how data science can augment a human auditor’s experience and judgement, why data analytics and AI are slightly different, how they can enable new ways of thinking and why restoring trust must include everyone. It was a presentation packed with insight, takeaways and learnings for accountancy professionals.

Rounding up the session, Solon introduced the concept of Ai Auditors – human auditors that have been augmented with AI – with a great quote from Moore Kingston Smith about how working with MindBridge has enabled them to pick samples and look at different transactions in a more robust way:

“…if someone asks me why we have audited a particular sample, I can explain the computer-based technique which is a lot more robust than saying one of my trainees picked ten transactions…”

The future of accountancy firms 

Towards the end of the day, MindBridge’s Director of Growth Europe, Stuart Cobbe took part in a panel session chaired by Jon Lisby, Director, Global Alliance Advisory Services, exploring where the accountancy profession is heading and what future opportunities might look like.

When discussing what the firm of 2025 will look like, Stuart added that accountants have been agile in their response to the pandemic, with a lot of changes underpinned by technology, enabling different ways to create and add value:

“The accounting or audit firm of the future will be more varied with its skill composition and it will be more agile in the way that it plans for its business. It will also be much more responsive to the needs of the market; less checklist-driven and more critical thought-driven.” 

The new era of audit 

We were thrilled with the volume of engaging and insightful conversations that our team had with delegates at the Digital Accountancy Forum. Commenting on the success of the event, Solon adds:

“The Digital Accountancy Forum was truly a great event, showing what can be achieved virtually! Every delegate we spoke to was keen to learn about Ai Auditors and how AI can really transform the audit process. We’d like to thank everyone who visited our virtual booth and attended our sessions – we’re already looking forward to next year’s event!” 

If you didn’t get a chance to chat with one of our team members at the virtual booth but would like to find out more, please email info@mindbridge.ai.