Top 20 firm beats Big Four in charity audit field

When it comes to fee income from auditing charities, Crowe Clark Whitehill has no equal, according to the latest annual Charity Financials audit league table

The top 20 firm has come top of the table for the ninth year in a row, beating 892 other audit firms with its 8.2% market share.

It has 240 client charities with a combined audited income of £4.8bn, which brings in an annual fee income of £5.7m.

Commenting on the results, CCW head of non profits Pesh Framjee said that the firm was delighted to have retained its title in an increasingly competitive market.

“Charities are facing challenging times. Cost escalations, finding pressures, public trust, political uncertainty and increased demand all impact on what charities do,” he added.

“Auditors who know the sector and understand the challenges can add value that goes beyond a signature on an audit report.”

The league table is compiled from the list of the top 5,000 charities. To be included in the list, the charity must have either an annual income above £1.468m, annual expenditure greater than £1.482m, or total funds or net assets that are worth more than £3.429m.

The table shows that CCW is a clear winner in terms of fee income*, ahead of second-placed PwC which earns £4.6m from 125 clients with audited income of £5.6bn.

Third placed BDO has 192 clients with combined audited income of £3.6bn and it earns £4.5m in fee income from them.

However, when it comes to number of clients, CCW can only make it into second position behind top 30 firm haysmacintyre with its 263 clients. For the second year running, haysmacintyre also made the most client gains: it acquired 30 new clients over the year and additional audit fees of £449,000.

Both firms knocked RSM, last year’s firm with the most clients, into third place.

CCW could only make it into second place when it came to auditing the largest amount of charity income. PwC held on to poll position for the fifth year running with its total of £5.6bn, helped by large clients like Cancer Research UK, the National Trust and Oxfam.

However, it lost the tender for the Wellcome Trust’s audit to Deloitte during the year. The Trust also agreed to up the audit fee for Deloitte by £100,000 to £300,000.

On average, audit fees rose by 4.4% over the year after four years of negative growth. Nevertheless, the large majority of charities (85%) did not see their fees rise, even when acquiring new clients.

For instance, RSM may have won the audit of St Mungo Commuity Housing Association from Smith & Williamson, but the real winner was the charity which saw its audit fee drop from £141,000 last year to £42,000 this year.

Generally, most charities seem happy with the services their auditors offer though – only 328 of the 5,000 changed auditor in the last year while 42% of them have stayed with the same auditor for more than a decade and 348 have been with the same auditor for 15 years or more.

*As well as CCW, PwC and BDO, the rest of the top 10 auditors by fee income (in descending order) are RSM, Grant Thornton, KPMG, haysmacintyre, Buzzacott, Deloitte and Kingston Smith. EY came 17^th.

source: www.economia.icaew.com