From Control Checks to Enterprise Strategy with AI in Audit - with Itumeleng Masunyane of Amicorp
🎯 Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: From Control Checks to Enterprise Strategy with AI in Audit - with Itumeleng Masunyane of Amicorp
This 18-minute episode of the AI and Business Podcast, featuring Itumeleng Masunyane, SVP of Internal Audit at AMACorp Group, explores the transformative shift occurring in internal audit functions, particularly within the financial services sector, driven by Artificial Intelligence. The core narrative arc moves from the traditional, backward-looking role of compliance checking to a proactive, strategic partnership role enabled by AI technologies.
1. Focus Area
The discussion centers on AI adoption in Internal Audit and Compliance within Financial Services. Key topics included the evolution of audit responsibilities, the necessity of shifting from reactive to proactive risk monitoring, the required cultural and data infrastructure changes, and the enduring importance of human judgment alongside advanced AI capabilities, including Generative AI (LLMs).
2. Key Technical Insights
- Automation of Deterministic Tasks: AI is effectively automating routine, low-level control testing and mundane tasks, freeing up audit teams’ time for strategic work.
- Shift to Interpretation: Auditors must evolve from being mere reviewers to becoming interpreters of intelligence systems, requiring increased data fluency and digital literacy to analyze AI-generated insights.
- Generative AI in Case Making: Even in highly rules-based audit areas, probabilistic technologies like LLMs can be used to construct stronger, more persuasive arguments and reports for regulators and stakeholders.
3. Business/Investment Angle
- Strategic Repositioning: AI enables internal audit teams to transition from checklist compliance officers to strategic business partners by providing timely, data-driven insights on emerging risks.
- Value Creation through Proactivity: By anticipating new risks and demonstrating how to mitigate them using AI-derived metrics, audit builds trust and enhances its value proposition to the organization, enabling growth.
- Data Governance Imperative: Successful deployment of AI for deeper insights requires robust data governance and alignment of audit metrics with overall business growth objectives.
4. Notable Companies/People
- Itumeleng Masunyane (Guest): SVP of Internal Audit at AMACorp Group, a global financial services firm specializing in corporate management and fund administration across emerging markets.
- AMACorp Group: Highlighted as a global firm operating in complex, regulated environments, providing context for the need for advanced audit capabilities.
- MindBridge: Mentioned as the sponsor of this special series on AI and financial workflows, indicating a focus on AI solutions in audit technology.
5. Future Implications
The industry is heading toward an audit function that is real-time, agile, and deeply integrated with business strategy. The future auditor will be multidisciplinary, connecting dots between risk, technology, ethics, and strategy. While AI will handle data ingestion and anomaly detection, the ultimate differentiator will be the human capacity for judgment, context, and agility in responding to rapidly changing business goals—a capability machines currently lack.
6. Target Audience
This episode is most valuable for Audit Executives, Risk Management Professionals, Compliance Officers, and CIOs/CDOs in regulated industries, particularly Financial Services. It is highly relevant for professionals focused on AI/tech adoption strategy within governance and control functions.
🏢 Companies Mentioned
💬 Key Insights
"successful adoption of AI depends on more than just the tools. Building trust in the data, aligning audit objectives with business priorities, and ensuring audit teams understand how to work with AI inputs are all essential for long-term impact."
"you can give these systems on the probabilistic side, on the generative capabilities, you can give them a sense of judgment, but that does not mean they have a full context of someone with a social security card who's been with your organization for four years who went to school for this stuff."
"The most valuable auditors will be those ones who can connect the dots between risk, strategy, technology, and ethics."
"I think this opens a door for internal audit folks to be maybe thought of more as strategic business partners rather than just folks checking marks on a checklist, even more so armed with this technology."
"AI is expanding the role of internal audit from control checks and compliance into broader strategic influence across the enterprise."
"even as AI advances, human judgment remains central, especially in financial services. Interpreting risk patterns, communicating findings, and making informed decisions will require a level of oversight that machines can't provide alone."