What is the difference between audit industry vs audit financial services ?

I know that one focuses on normal companies and the other focuses on banks/insurances. But which one has more advantages in terms of skills you learn, career possibilities, etc. ?

Which one is harder to get into & more "prestigious" ? If I would be equally interested in both of them, which one would be the best choice ?

 
Best Response

Interesting question, thanks for posting it and I'm going to try and help you.

I'm not sure if this is something where "best" is the most accurate word, it's just a different focus in the audits. For example, if you are talking about non-finance company audits, then you are (for the most part) going to be doing what's known as "technical audits" or "IT audits". In a nutshell, you'll be reviewing a company's IT systems and procedures for thing like protecting credit cards, protecting customer info (PII), and so on and so on. The audits are generally the same from company to company because you're looking at similar systems. If you're an IT geek you might love this, but that doesn't make it "better" than financial audits.

On the financial side, the work is a little bit more varied because there's more to audit. I work for BB and our audit department has people with all kinds of different backgrounds in it because you have to bring different experience levels to the table in order to bring these audits to fruition.

As to which one you should go into, that all depends on your longterm goals. Do you want to be more on the IT side or more on the financial side? In a finance company, audit is a great way to be exposed to different departments and then maybe make a lateral move once you identify a group you want to work with. On the IT side, if you show technical competence, clients will make you offers to join their team once the audit is done.

Good luck to you.

 

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