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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Auditor Extraordinaire: The Curious Case of NPA Underreporting in India -Hemindra Hazari

Auditor Extraordinaire: The Curious Case of NPA Underreporting in India -Hemindra Hazari

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published Published on May 29, 2017   modified Modified on May 29, 2017
-TheWire.in

At Axis Bank and Yes Bank, it appears that a single auditor of a member firm of Ernst and Young has overlooked gross NPAs of a staggering Rs 13,655 crore.

Recently, Axis Bank and Yes Bank jolted the Indian banking community while releasing their annual results. Both banks disclosed a staggeringly large divergence between the banks’ audited accounts and the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI)  findings regarding bad loans on the books of these banks for the year ended March 31, 2016.

Against this background, the role of the auditor needs a closer look.

Surprisingly, in FY’2016, both Axis Bank and Yes Bank were audited by the same person, one Viren H. Mehta (membership number 048749). Mehta is a partner at Batliboi and Co., which in turn is a member firm of Ernst & Young. Some would call it strange for the same auditor to audit competing banks in the same year. What is even more unusual is that the accounts certified of both the banks by the same, individual statutory auditor have been found misleading by the statutory regulator.

Since the disclosure of the quantum of non-performing asset (NPA) divergence, Axis Bank has under-performed the Sensex-30 by 4.8% and Yes Bank by 10.2%, causing a loss to shareholders and a greater loss of credibility to the senior management and auditors of both the banks.

The credibility of the senior management and the auditor of Axis and Yes Bank took a beating when the RBI issued a notification on April 18, 2017  entitled “Disclosure in the “Notes to Accounts” to the Financial Statements- Divergence in the asset classification and provisioning,” specifically dealing with such cases, where there is considerable variance between gross NPAs reported by banks in their annual accounts and NPAs which are identified by RBI inspection teams. An excerpt from the notification states,

    “There have been instances of material divergences in banks’ asset classification and provisioning from the RBI norms, thereby leading to the published financial statements not depicting a true and fair view of the financial position of the bank… it has been decided that banks shall make suitable disclosures as per Annex, wherever either (a) the additional provisioning requirements assessed by RBI exceed 15 percent of the published net profits after tax for the reference period or (b) the additional Gross NPAs identified by RBI exceed 15 percent of the published incremental Gross NPAs for the reference period, or both.”


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TheWire.in, 23 May, 2017, https://thewire.in/138498/auditor-extraordinaire-the-curious-case-of-npa-underreporting-in-india/


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