Sebi extends deadline for empanelment of forensic auditors for MFs, AMCs, trustees

Capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Tuesday extended time till March-end for submission of applications for empanelment of forensic auditors for mutual funds, asset management companies (AMCs) and trustee entities.

Earlier, the interested entities were supposed to submit their applications by March 6.

"It has been decided to extend the last date for submission of application and the revised date for submission of application is March 31, 2023," Sebi said in a public notice.

On February 11, the Sebi invited applications from eligible firms for the empanelment of forensic auditors for MFs, their AMCs and trustee companies.

After being empanelled, the auditors would take up assignments related to forensic audit of mutual funds, their AMCs and trustee companies or board of trustees. The applicants are required to undertake acquisition, extraction and analysis of digital evidence from mobile, computers, tablets, hard drives and USB drives. Also, the applicants need to prepare and submit a report mentioning the findings and conclusions on the analysis.

As per the eligibility criteria of Sebi, the applicant need to have at least 10 years of experience in the field of forensic audit and digital forensic and minimum of 10 partners or directors, out of which five of them should be actively involved in forensic audit-related work

Among others, total revenue of the applicant from forensic audit assignments in the last three financial years must be at least Rs 1 crore.

The Expression of Interest (EoI) came a day after Sebi proposed to enhance the role and accountability of the mutual fund trustees in a move to safeguard unitholders' interests. Also, Sebi had proposed a common platform for the dissemination of public announcements by mutual funds

In order to have an independent review mechanism for the decisions of AMC from the perspective of the unit holders' interest across all products and services, Sebi had suggested to mandate that a Unit Holder Protection Committee (UHPC) should be constituted by the board of AMC.

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