Given the significant changes in the economic environment surrounding financial institutions, improving internal audits is an important issue for financial institutions, regardless of their size, to continue business appropriately.
The Financial Services Agency (FSA) has published reports on internal audits on three occasions since 2019 in order to encourage financial institutions to improve their internal audits.
Under these circumstances, the FSA received requests to clarify the level of internal audits indicated in 2019, in monitoring financial institutions' efforts to improve internal audits.
After the publication of the 2024 Monitoring Report, the Institute of Internal Auditors　(IIA), an international organization for internal auditing, started applying the Global Internal Auditing Standards (2024 edition) (January 2025).
In light of international trends, the FSA decided that it would be appropriate to revisit the approach to internal audits at financial institutions, taking into account global standards and the perspectives of the broader financial industry and related experts. Therefore, the FSA has convened the “Working Group on Improving Internal Audits of Financial Institutions” since January 2025. At the Working Group, on five occasions, opinions were exchanged on matters such as the level of internal auditing in the financial industry and the stance required of management.
Based on the discussions at the Working Group, the FSA have published a report (2025) (Attachment).
This report describes the direction in order to serve as a guideline for future initiatives by financial institutions.
The FSA expect that this report will serve as a reference not only for financial institutions but also for non-financial institutions as well as overseas financial regulators.
- (Attachment_01)
report (2025) (2,938KB)- (Attachment_02)
- report (2025) Summary (263KB)
