Stout provided risk advisory services to a biotechnology company. We worked with the company to help management gain comfort over financial statement accuracy and mitigate risks under an extremely compressed timeline of less than four months. We remediated the company’s material weakness in its internal controls by implementing a proper controls environment for a publicly traded company.

The team led process walkthroughs for in-scope financial statement processes with key stakeholders to understand and document the internal controls performed by the company’s employees. The team documented the controls in a Risk and Control Matrix and identified key risks that were not mitigated by controls to provide actionable recommendations to management to remediate the findings.

Additionally, the team performed testing at various stages, including interim, roll-forward, and year-end, to ensure controls were designed appropriately and operating effectively. The team collaborated with management to develop a remediation plan for any control deficiencies discovered during testing. The plan outlined the necessary steps to enhance or establish controls that were ineffective, ensuring that the company could better mitigate risks of financial misstatements.

Once the remediation plan was in place, the team conducted further testing to ensure that the remediation efforts were effective in addressing control deficiencies.

Lastly, the team provided a detailed memo or report summarizing all the work performed throughout the year. This document outlined the findings, control assessments, remediation efforts, and any other relevant information to provide a comprehensive overview of the company’s Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance status to management and the external auditors.