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Yolandi Ferreira

Yolandi Ferreira

Partner and Head of Audit in Africa at Forvis Mazars, based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Sep 15, 2026

4:40
So perhaps just deal with some of those misconceptions for us, and then also just walk us through the value of knowing a sector, for example, or maybe being an auditor who understands listed versus unlisted companies and multinationals and those sort of concepts.
4:55
Yes.
4:55
I think probably the biggest misconception out there, well, there's two, is one that fraud can never happen if the auditor has issued an audit opinion.
5:05
Well, fraudsters are quite a bit more clever than most auditors and finance practitioners or experts because fraud is all around normally collaboration or doing things that is not in the ordinary course of business and quite covered up, you know, undercover, quite difficult for an auditor or a CFO to just pick up, otherwise there wouldn't be large frauds because it would be easy to pick it up.
5:31
So I think one of the big misconceptions is that having an audit opinion from a large audit firm means that there's nothing wrong in that company, and I think the reason for that is the very nature of audit.
5:46
Auditors don't look at every single transaction.
5:49
Auditors don't express explicit assurance that everything is right, and that's a difficult thing to understand, particularly when something has gone wrong.

9 MINS LATER

15:19
Perhaps we can now move on to some practical examples of the sort of value add that auditors do bring, because people hear this, and I mean, you've raised it as well, but it's always so good if there are some real-world examples that you've perhaps got at hand where, as an auditor, as an audit partner, or that you're aware of, actual value has been added beyond just, "Hey, you are now compliant, ticking the box." What can you give us there to help us understand that better?

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