Armanino launches risk advisory practice to offer audit compliance services
California-based accounting and consulting firm Armanino LLP has launched a Risk Assurance & Advisory practice. The new practice will offer audit compliance services, internal audit, cybersecurity, privacy services, and enterprise risk management, among others.
Armanino LLP is an accounting and consulting firm based out of San Ramon, California. Founded in 1953, the firm has additional Californian offices in San Jose, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, Woodland Hills, and San Francisco, as well as offices in Portland, OR, and Naperville, IL. Armanino is the largest independent accounting and consulting firm based in California, and one of the ten fastest-growing accounting and consulting firms in the country.
The firm offers client services in its four departments: Audit, Tax, Consulting, and Business Management. Now, Armanino has announced the launching of a fifth service department – Risk Assurance & Advisory. The new department will satisfy increasing client demand for risk and compliance support, including traditional services like SOC 1/2/3 audit compliance, internal audit, and SOX 404. The department will also offer other risk services like cybersecurity, privacy services, and enterprise risk management.Joining the new department as managing director will be Todd Bishop, a seasoned consultant with almost two decades of experience in the areas of compliance, internal audit, and IT assurance. Bishop joins Armanino from Gap Inc, where he was Senior Director of Internal Audit & Sox Compliance. Prior to that, Bishop served as Director, Internal Audit, at Dolby Laboratories. Bishop started his career in risk and compliance at PwC, where he stayed for over a decade, reaching the level of Risk Assurance Director. At PwC, he led complex audit engagements, including SOX 404 attestations and Service Organization Control Reports.
“The new Risk Assurance and Advisory practice is an integration of several risk-centric solutions that enables us to provide our clients with a more efficient and effective approach to managing their key risks,” remarked Liam Collins, partner-in-charge of Risk Assurance and Advisory Services. “This combination strengthens the firm’s ability to strategically engage with each client and provide a custom-tailored risk assurance plan that will protect their organization.”
Compliance and regulatory advisory services are a hot portfolio segment in the consulting business these days, as firms struggle to keep up with changing business regulations, often on a multinational level. GDPR compliance regulations, for example, left many firms scrambling for advice on how to implement the new EU internet privacy regulations before the deadline earlier this year. Facing huge penalties for non-compliance, many international websites have been forced to go offline from European IPs as they work on bringing their operations up to snuff.
Demand is spurring non-traditional firms to get into the regulatory consulting game. London-based legal mega-firm Allen & Overy recently launched a regulatory consulting practice to offer broad business advisory services in the realm of financial regulations – rather than the strictly legal services that are the firm’s bread and butter.