Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated and separate financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatements, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that included our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these consolidated and separate financial statements.
As part of an audit in accordance with ISAs, we exercise professional judgement and maintain professional skepticism throughout the audit, we also:
- Identify and assess the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated and separate financial statements, whether due to fraud or error, design and perform audit procedures responsive to those risks, and obtain audit evidence that is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion. The risks of not detecting a material misstatement resulting from fraud is higher than for one resulting from error, as fraud may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omission, misrepresentations, or the override of internal control.
- Obtain an understanding of internal control relevant to the audit in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Group and the Company’s internal control.
- Evaluate the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates and related disclosures made by the directors.
- Conclude on the appropriateness of the directors’ use of the going concern basis of accounting and based on the audit evidence obtained, whether a material uncertainty exists related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt on the Group and the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. If we conclude that a material uncertainty exists, we are required to draw attention in our auditor’s report to the related disclosures in the consolidated and separate financial statements or, if such disclosures are inadequate, to modify our opinion. Our conclusions are based on the audit evidence obtained up to date of our auditor’s report. However, future events or conditions may cause the Group and/or the Company to cease to continue as a going concern.
- Evaluate the overall presentation, structure and content of the consolidated and separate financial statements, including the disclosures, and whether the consolidated and separate financial statements represent the underlying transactions and events in a manner that achieves fair presentation.
- Obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence regarding the financial information of the entities or business activities within the Group to express an opinion on the consolidated and separate financial statements. We are responsible for the direction, supervision and performance of the group audit. We remain solely responsible for our audit opinion.
We communicate with the directors regarding, among other matters, the planned scope and timing of the audit and significant audit findings, including any significant deficiencies in internal control that we identified during our audit.
We also provide the directors with a statement that we have complied with relevant ethical requirements regarding independence, and to communicate with them all relationships and other matters that may reasonably be thought to bear on our independence, and where applicable, actions taken to eliminate threats or safeguards applied.
From the matters communicated with the directors, we determine those matters that were of most significance in the audit of the consolidated and separate financial statements of the current period and are therefore the key audit matters. We described these matters in our auditor’s report unless law or regulation preclude public disclosure about the matter or when, in extremely rare circumstances, we determine that a matter should not be communicated in our report because the adverse consequence of doing so would reasonably be expected to outweigh the public interest benefits of such communication.
