As an accounting technical manager at The Shard (Pty) Limited, Pride Msweli CA(SA) is a qualified chartered accountant with international audit experience. She is very passionate about financial literacy, audit reform and the creation of generational wealth.
Founded in 2013, The Shard (Pty) Ltd is a young, experienced and dynamic 100% black-owned consulting firm based in Johannesburg. They provide a unique combination of professional services, including risk assurance and advisory services, actuarial, accounting and analytics.
The Shard consults with the private and public sector clients and provides them with an in-depth understanding of their abilities and financial risks they face, as well as developing solutions to mitigate these financial risks.
Before joining The Shard in November 2022, Pride, who describes herself as a simple girl from the village with big dreams who loves to laugh, served in various roles across the globe, including as a senior audit associate at Deloitte in Ireland and a financial reporting specialist for Bidvest Bank. She also completed a remote secondment in the United States as senior audit consultant through SAPRO.
With five years of experience in accounting, external audit, and financial services, Pride’s core area of expertise is in international financial reporting standards for multiple industries by evaluating the recoverability of intercompany receivables for the purpose of consolidating group financial statements of entities as well as reviewing the financial statements and ensuring continued improvement and compliance with IFRS and related developments.
Her corporate experience involves auditing JSE-listed companies, and she has expertise in international standards of auditing as well as financial reporting standards.
As a technical accounting manager, Pride has to analyse data, records, reports and statements. In addition, she reviews the chart of accounts to identify changes that need to be made to be able to comply with IFRS 17 financial statements. Furthermore, Pride has to review the financial statements and ensure continued improvement and compliance with IFRS and related developments; provide technical advice to group companies and/or divisions (for example on product development, special accounting and non-routine transactions), and provide support for and resolution of issues arising from business as usual and routine transactions (including information for analysts and investor relations).
She is also responsible for the preparation and delivery of technical updates and communication (verbal and/or written) of industry developments to relevant stakeholders, as required; providing support for the implementation of new accounting standards; and performing company valuations and due diligence.
Over the past few years, the South African auditing profession has suffered immense reputational damage through financial reporting scandals. CAs(SA) now need to take on the challenge and responsibility once more of protecting the public interest through their financial reporting roles.
Pride has realised the future of the audit profession must emphasise quality, transparency, credibility and independence and rebuild trust by embracing a culture of challenge while maintaining professional independence and scepticism.
It is time for change and audit reform has never been more imperative than now. The answer to restoring the trust and relevance of the profession lie in the professions members embracing the concept of joint accountability in order to improve the stability and trustworthiness of the finance ecosystem.
Pride explains audit reform as: ‘The proposed improvement to the auditing profession which includes increased accountability for directors, requiring a clearer operational separation of the audit and non-audit activities of firms, joint audits, and mandatory shared audits for listed companies between the Big Four and smaller audit firms.’
She believes audit reform is a necessary and important step toward the restoration of trust in the auditing profession. ‘It is important in order to improve audit quality and restore public confidence in the profession.’
The challenge of effective audit reform, in her opinion, is talent retention and development in auditing firms. ‘I feel lack of accountability for directors and lacking in the effectiveness of internal controls also plays a big role.’
According to Pride, integrity and ethical behaviour and decision-making play a critical role in audit reform. ‘The growing importance of ethics within the audit profession is due to the highly resonating financial scandals which had a negative impact on the auditing profession.’
Author
Marteli Brewis
