Australian Government
Auditing and Assurance Standards Board
Chair
Mr Doug Niven FCA was appointed as the full-time Chair and CEO of the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (AUASB) for a period of five years with effect from 22 September 2023. He had been Acting Chair since 31 July 2023.
Doug is also a member of Australia’s Financial Reporting Council, the New Zealand Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and the IAASB/IESBA Stakeholder Advisory Council.
Doug was previously Chief Accountant of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) where he was responsible for strategy and policy on financial reporting and audit, and complex and technical accounting and audit matters and issues, and external stakeholder liaison. He also had operational responsibility for ASIC’s financial reporting surveillances and audit firm inspections from 2008 to 2021 and continued to have a key role in those programs
Among other matters, Doug was responsible for developing ASIC’s regulatory guidance on non-IFRS financial information, the operating and financial review, the role of directors in supporting audit quality, impairment guidance for directors and communicating ASIC audit findings to directors.
Doug was a member of Committee 1 of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions on Accounting, Audit and Disclosure (IOSCO C1), the IOSCO Sustainability Technical Review Coordination Group, the IOSCO Sustainability Assurance Working Group, the IOSCO ISSB Protocols Working Group and the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators (IFIAR).
He was a member of the IFIAR Global Audit Quality Working Group which met with the largest six firms globally to discuss initiatives to improve audit quality. He was also a member of the IOSCO Auditing and Accounting Subcommittees, the IFIAR Board, the IFIAR Global Audit Quality Working Group, the IFIAR Standards Coordination Working Group and the IFIAR Enforcement Working Group, the IFIAR Inspection Survey Task Force and the IFIAR Sustainability Task Force. He represented IOSCO Committee 1 at the Monitoring Group during the development of the reforms of the international auditing and ethical standard setting arrangements.
Doug was a past Chair of the IOSCO Auditing Subcommittee, the IOSCO IFRS Information Sharing Subcommittee and the IFIAR International Cooperation Working Group.
Doug has more than 40 years of experience in financial reporting and audit. He joined ASIC in 1998 and was at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu from 1983 where he audited companies in the financial services sector and other industries.