Ten articles into this series, the focus has been on what the auditor must do. That focus is correct as far as it goes, but it is also incomplete. A competent auditor delivers a competent audit. Whether that audit is then supported, challenged, and integrated into the entity’s governance is the audit committee’s work. The auditor signs the opinion. The audit committee ensures the opinion was earned.

Across the Caribbean, audit committees vary widely in how well they perform this work. Some are exemplary — disciplined in composition, rigorous in cadence, substantive in their engagement with the auditor and with management. Others are formal in structure but ceremonial in practice, with meetings that consume time without producing scrutiny. The difference between the two is rarely a question of intent. Audit committee members are almost without exception serious people doing serious work. The difference is structural — how the committee is composed, how it meets, what it reads, what it asks, and how its work is integrated into the rest of the board’s governance.

This article addresses each of those structural elements. It is written for audit committee chairs, members, and the directors who appoint them. It is also written for the management teams who present to audit committees and for the auditors who report to them — because the effectiveness of the audit committee is a shared responsibility, and improvements at the committee level depend on whether management and the auditor support them or quietly resist them. The article closes with the Caribbean Audit Committee Effectiveness Scorecard — a structured self-assessment any Caribbean audit committee can use to take its own measure.

What the Audit Committee Exists to Do

The audit committee’s remit varies by jurisdiction, by listing status, and by sector, but its core responsibilities are remarkably consistent across the Caribbean. The committee exists to oversee, on the board’s behalf, the integrity of the financial statements, the effectiveness of internal control and risk management, the independence and performance of the external auditor, the work of internal audit where it exists, and the entity’s compliance with laws, regulations, and ethical standards. In some jurisdictions and sectors, the remit extends further — cybersecurity oversight, whistleblowing arrangements, related-party transactions, sustainability reporting and assurance, AML/CFT controls.

The audit committee does not perform the audit, the risk management, or the compliance work directly. It oversees those functions, holds them to account, and ensures they have the resources, independence, and authority to perform their work. The distinction is important. An audit committee that confuses oversight with doing the work substitutes its own judgment for the judgment of professionals who are better placed to make the call. An audit committee that mistakes its role for passive reporting forfeits the scrutiny the entity is entitled to receive.

“The auditor signs the opinion. The audit committee ensures the opinion was earned.”

The Discipline of Composition

Who Should Be on the Committee

Composition is the first and most consequential decision the board makes about its audit committee. Five characteristics distinguish well-composed Caribbean audit committees:

• All members are non-executive directors, and a majority — in best practice, all — are independent. Independence under the IESBA Code, under regional listing rules, and in substance is a baseline; the substantive test is whether the member is free of relationships with management or the controlling shareholders that would compromise the member’s judgment on a difficult call.
• At least one member is a financial expert. The committee must include a member with recent and relevant financial reporting, audit, or financial management experience — not as a token credential, but as a substantive resource the rest of the committee can lean on when the technical questions become acute. In Caribbean entities of any scale, two financially experienced members is the better number.
• The committee includes sector experience. A financial services audit committee benefits from a member with banking, insurance, or securities experience. A tourism group benefits from a member who has run hotel operations. A regulated entity benefits from a member familiar with the supervisory environment. Sector knowledge is not optional in 2026; it is part of competence.
• The committee chair is independent and substantively engaged. The chair sets the agenda, runs the meetings, manages the relationship with the auditor and with management, and represents the committee at the board. A ceremonial chair produces a ceremonial committee. A substantive chair produces a substantive one.
• Tenure is balanced. Long-serving members bring continuity and institutional memory; newer members bring fresh perspective. Best practice across the region is a maximum tenure of nine years on the audit committee, with the chair role serving no more than five of those years.

Size and Authority

Most Caribbean audit committees are between three and five members. Below three, the committee lacks deliberative balance; above five, it tends to lose decisional discipline. The committee should be granted explicit authority by the board to engage external advisors, to require management attendance, to meet privately with the external auditor and the internal auditor without management present, and to escalate matters to the board when its concerns are not addressed. Authority that is not explicit is authority that is not used.

The Discipline of Cadence

How Often, How Long, and In What Form

A Caribbean audit committee should meet at least four times a year, with additional meetings called as circumstances require. The four scheduled meetings correspond, broadly, to the audit cycle: planning, half-year (or interim review), year-end fieldwork, and post-audit / outlook. Meetings should run a minimum of two hours; ninety-minute audit committee meetings produce ninety minutes of governance and substantially less scrutiny.

Each scheduled meeting has a recognisable shape:

• Planning meeting (typically Q1 or Q2 depending on year-end): the auditor’s engagement plan, the fraud risk assessment, the significant accounting estimates expected to require judgment, the materiality scoping, the resources and timeline. The committee should receive a substantive plan and engage with it, not approve it on the auditor’s reading.
• Half-year / interim meeting: the auditor’s interim review observations, management’s half-year results, the entity’s liquidity and going-concern position, any matters arising since planning. For listed entities, this is also where the interim financial statements are reviewed.
• Year-end fieldwork meeting: the auditor’s findings, the proposed audit opinion, the significant judgments and accounting estimates, the management representation letter, and any matters the auditor wishes to raise with the committee in or outside management’s presence.
• Post-audit / outlook meeting: the audit committee’s assessment of the audit itself, the auditor’s independence reconfirmation, the audit firm’s ISQM-related disclosures where relevant, internal audit’s annual plan, and the committee’s self-assessment for the year ahead.

“Ninety-minute audit committee meetings produce ninety minutes of governance and substantially less scrutiny. Two hours is the floor, not the ceiling.”

Private Sessions

Each scheduled meeting should include a private session — a period during which the audit committee meets with the external auditor without management present, and a separate period with internal audit and / or the chief financial officer without other members of management. These private sessions are where the committee learns what it would not otherwise learn. An audit committee that does not hold private sessions has voluntarily limited what its auditor can tell it.

The Discipline of Information

What Should Be in the Committee Pack

The quality of an audit committee’s discussion is determined, more than any other single factor, by the quality of the materials it receives in advance. A well-prepared committee pack is concise, substantive, and arrives with sufficient time for serious reading. Five elements distinguish a competent committee pack from a poor one:

• A focused agenda with time allocations and supporting paper references — not a bullet list of topics, but a structured plan for the time available.
• The auditor’s communication in the form ISA 260 (Revised) contemplates — a structured document that addresses planned scope, identified risks, significant findings, significant deficiencies, and matters of concern. “We have nothing to report this period” is not an ISA 260 communication; it is the absence of one.
• Management’s papers on each substantive matter — the financial statements draft with key judgments highlighted, the going-concern memorandum with cash flow forecast and sensitivity analysis, the risk register, the compliance report, the internal audit report on each completed engagement.
• A standing dashboard of metrics the committee tracks over time — audit independence indicators, fraud-relevant exception trends, control deficiency status, regulatory correspondence summary, whistleblowing case summary.
• Pre-read time of at least five working days. A committee that receives its papers two days before the meeting cannot do its work; the meeting becomes the first reading.

The Discipline of Inquiry

The Questions That Distinguish a Substantive Committee

Across this series, each article has offered specific questions an audit committee should put to its auditor. Eleven articles in, the cumulative list is substantial. The committee that has read the series can use those questions directly. Six questions — specifically of the audit committee chair, not of the external auditor — are worth asking annually:

• Are we receiving private time with the external auditor outside management’s presence at every scheduled meeting? If not, why not, and what changes?
• Are we reading the auditor’s ISA 260 (Revised) communication in full, and does it tell us what the auditor would actually want us to know — not just the procedural summary?
• Are we engaging substantively with the audit firm’s methodology, scoping decisions, fraud risk assessment, and going-concern conclusion — or are we accepting these on the auditor’s reading?
• Are we asking management the harder questions on significant accounting estimates — the ECL provisions, the impairment assessments, the fair values, the insurance reserves — or are we deferring to management’s working without scrutiny?
• Are we escalating to the board appropriately when matters warrant board attention, and is the board genuinely engaged with what we escalate?
• Are we, as a committee, doing the work the entity is entitled to expect of us?

The Discipline of Stewardship

Beyond Compliance, Toward Ongoing Stewardship

The audit committee’s work does not end with the year-end audit. The committee’s ongoing stewardship of the entity’s financial integrity, risk posture, and governance environment is continuous. Three habits distinguish committees that perform this stewardship well from committees that complete the annual cycle and call it done:

• Continuous engagement with significant risks. The committee maintains awareness of how the entity’s principal financial and operational risks evolve between meetings — cyber incidents, regulatory developments, major transactions, market events. Where a matter requires attention before the next scheduled meeting, the chair convenes the committee.
• Active relationship with the auditor outside the meeting cycle. The audit committee chair and the lead audit partner maintain a working relationship in which urgent matters can be raised in either direction without formality. The relationship is professional, not personal; it is also accessible.
• Annual self-assessment, taken seriously. The committee assesses its own effectiveness once a year, against a framework the committee itself owns. The self-assessment surfaces composition gaps, cadence weaknesses, information failures, and inquiry shortfalls. The output is a set of changes the committee implements before the next cycle.

“The audit committee’s work does not end with the year-end audit. Stewardship is continuous. Compliance is the floor; stewardship is the ceiling.”

The Caribbean Audit Committee Effectiveness Scorecard

Dawgen Global has developed the Caribbean Audit Committee Effectiveness Scorecard as a structured self-assessment for use by audit committees across the region. The Scorecard covers five domains — composition, cadence, information, inquiry, and stewardship — with twenty-five indicators across the five domains, each rated on a four-point scale. The total possible score is one hundred. Committees scoring above eighty on first application are well-positioned. Committees scoring between sixty and seventy-nine have clear improvement opportunities the assessment surfaces. Committees scoring below sixty have structural deficiencies the board should address as a matter of governance priority.

The Scorecard is intended to be self-administered by the committee chair, in confidence, with the option of bringing in external facilitation for the discussion. It is not a regulatory submission. It is a private instrument the committee can use to take its own measure. Dawgen Global makes the Scorecard available without charge to Caribbean audit committee chairs, accessible from the firm’s website.

What’s Next in the Series

Article 12 — the final article in this series — introduces in full the methodology that has been the architectural anchor across the previous eleven articles: the D·ASSURE™ framework. Seven pillars, one integrated approach, the basis on which Dawgen Global conducts every audit engagement across the region. The series closes not with a marketing piece but with the framework itself, available for audit committees and CFOs to apply to their own engagement decisions.

To request the Caribbean Audit Committee Effectiveness Scorecard, or for a confidential conversation about audit committee effectiveness in your entity — including independent facilitation of an annual self-assessment — write to [email protected] or visit dawgen.global.

About the Author

Dr. Dawkins Brown is the Executive Chairman and Founder of Dawgen Global, an independent, integrated multidisciplinary professional services firm headquartered in New Kingston, Jamaica, with operations across more than fifteen Caribbean territories. He writes weekly on Caribbean governance, audit, and assurance matters through Caribbean Boardroom Perspectives and The Caribbean Advisory Brief.

The Caribbean Audit Imperative

A twelve-article series from Dawgen Global  |  dawgen.global

About Dawgen Global