It has come to my attention that certain auditors with CPAs who specialize in EBP audits have felt "stuck" or have been described as "pigeonholed" during exploration of the job market (i.e. leaving means resetting their career to an assistant or staff). I think that that sentiment is underselling the daily duties of an EBP audit specialist looking for a change.
An auditor with an EBP specialty is uniquely able to handle multiple parts of a business:
- rolling account balances (direct expertise in census and 401(k) accounts)
- this is easily transferrable to PPE and construction in progress(CIP) and work in progress(WIP) inventory.)
- the analysis done on the PY to CY defined benefit (pension) census data to reduce sample selections is heavy hitting. After doing that, you can do exploratory analysis and exception testing in any account and have a familiarity with visualization software and principles of data analytics to make it so that you do not have "garbage in, garbage out" efforts.
- working with multiple departments at a company (direct expertise in HR department, accounting department, external actuaries, 3rd party benefit providers (e.g. Cigna or Fidelity), and 3rd party recordkeepers (those who manage most of the accounting), and the controller/CFO)
- These departments are usually unfamiliar with what you are asking, so clarity in communication is key and is a strong skill
- The entire entity is a collection of 3 or more entities (recordkeeper, plan sponsor(s), and custodian at the very least), so unless someone puts in the effort to understand the entity before you arrive, an EBP auditor does exploratory talks and documentation to gain a knowledge of the complete picture.
- development of "blue sky" accounting policies (direct experience reading legally binding plan documents to see what the rules are for contributions, payments, etc. for the plan(s))
- Most single employer entities have acquired other companies. Those companies have often acquired other companies or have had ongoing negotiations with unions. Unions and other companies often had some ... interesting ... ways to calculate benefits to be provided. This means that an EBP auditor is comfortable reading a legal document and figuring out
- definitions
- steps to calculate
- relevant 3rd parties (e.g. actuaries)
to make a typical audit of benefit payments work. This comfort while working with legal documents makes both legal consulting and accounting policy creation significantly easier.
- development of long term planning - (direct experience with multiple audits that are spread out across the year and most audit evidence is available piecemeal throughout the year, so there isn't a "rush to the finish" so much as "we should get the reconciliations in march so we can make selections, then support will be provided 2 months later...")
- most businesses have a monthly and quarterly rush, but the planning larger over-arching projects is key to successful integration of a new software or accounting policy. Every EBP auditor has had to handle the changes due to a third party vendor changing
- performance of reconciliations - (direct experience with most client support staff providing information are not used to produce reconciliations, so the staff give support raw, and it is up to the auditor to tie it out.)
- This is the capstone of EBP work as it requires
- across departmental communication to get documents then
- transformation of those documents into something that resembles accounting and finance inputs then
- summarization into line items then comparing with "drivers" to predict and risk assess.
- All of which are handled timely and asked to the appropriate group in a clear way that only has to be asked once
- compliance with regulations - (direct experience - there is not a day where an EBP auditor does not think about compliance and the ways that the DOL wants this audited over standard auditor judgements under GAAS.)
- Nuances in compliance are easy to navigate as, an EBP auditor has not only materiality, performance materiality, and the clearly trivial threshold (et. al. GAAS judgmental thresholds) to consider, but they also have the DOL thresholds of "1 dollar to 1 participant" is material in their eyes. As such, the nuance between compliance and auditor judgment is a bright line based on the daily activities of an EBP auditor.
In conclusion, between all these key duties of an auditor with an EBP focus, this kind of audit alum is extremely well suited to be a controller with minor training. They also have substantial experience to assist or become an analytics manager, finance manager, or CFO.
P.S. As this experience may not be as directly applicable to certain job processes, consider behavioral questions about each area of expertise to see if that experience actually would be applicable.