Regulators Discuss Accounting And Auditing Developments At 2016 AICPA Conference

This year's American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Conference on SEC and PCAOB Developments, held on December 5-7, echoed several themes from prior AICPA conferences regarding regulatory priorities of interest to audit committees. The significant discussion topics included:

• Internal Control over Financial Reporting (ICFR). Consistent with the SEC's continued emphasis on ICFR, many speeches at this year's conference focused on ICFR. As newly-appointed SEC Chief Accountant Wesley Bricker noted, "it is hard to think of an area more important than ICFR to [the SEC's] mission of providing high-quality financial information that investors can rely on. If left unidentified or unaddressed, ICFR deficiencies can lead to lower-quality financial reporting and ultimately higher financial reporting restatement rates and higher cost of capital." New Deputy Chief Accountant Marc Panucci echoed the importance of ICFR by referencing the SEC Division of Enforcement's