AI in audit: scale gains without giving up human supervision

What AI does well and what remains the auditor’s role

The real value of AI in audit lies in scale. It reads large volumes of documents, scans extensive databases, cross-checks information and identifies patterns in a timeframe that manual work cannot reach. This frees the audit team from repetitive effort and brings them faster to what truly matters: risk, exceptions and errors.

Technical judgment, professional skepticism and contextual interpretation remain the auditor’s responsibility. AI shortens the path to evidence, but it is the team that interprets that evidence.

The focus should not be on “using AI”, but on demonstrating how that use is controlled.

Regulators, boards and audit committees are no longer asking only whether artificial intelligence is being used. The question has evolved: how is that use being governed?

Without governance, supervision and human review, AI stops being a quality gain and becomes a quality risk. What is expected today from a firm that applies AI in audit is clarity on:

• Which tools are used and at which stages of the work;

• How outputs are reviewed before becoming evidence;

• How data confidentiality and integrity are ensured.

What changes for the audited company

For the CFO, controller and finance team, the conversation also changes. It becomes necessary to answer, with agility, questions that previously remained in the background:

What is the criterion behind that entry or calculation memo?

Who owns the data, who originated it, who updated it and who is responsible for it?

Is there an audit trail that allows the path of the data to be reconstructed from its origin to the report?

As the checking process gains speed, inconsistencies appear earlier and with much greater clarity. This is positive: it allows corrections to be made sooner, avoids rework during closing and strengthens the reliability of financial statements. But it requires the company to be prepared to support criteria, data ownership and traceability.

VBR’s approach

At VBR, the use of technology in audit follows a simple principle: it accelerates analysis, but never replaces judgment. This is because every step supported by AI goes through technical supervision and human review, with documented governance and a focus on protecting the quality of the work and the trust in the numbers it attests.

The internal motto “going the extra mile with you” also applies here: technology exists so that partners and specialists have more room for what matters most, understanding the client’s business and supporting decisions with rigor.