An Oslo and London audit firm that builds its own software to carry out statutory audits for small and mid-sized companies.
Benford is a new kind of audit firm. An audit is an independent check that a company's accounts are accurate, and by law many companies must have one. Traditionally this means teams of auditors sorting through spreadsheets and emails. Benford holds an audit licence, employs qualified auditors and has built its own software, AuditOS, to do much of the routine checking. AuditOS connects to a client's accounting system, invoices and bank accounts and runs tests on the data, while the human auditors decide what to do about anything unusual and sign off the final opinion.
The Next Web and Tech.eu report that the three founders, Mads Bogen Oye (co-CEO), Thibault Mallion (co-CEO) and Andreas Rystad, previously worked at Palantir (a data software company), Goldman Sachs and One Peak (a consultancy). Benford has offices in London and Oslo, and is a registered audit firm in Norway. The articles do not give a founding date, and earlier coverage described a young company of around twenty people. It also plans to enter Sweden and other European markets.
The founders say earlier attempts to modernise audit were aimed at the auditor's desk and left the firm around it unchanged. In Oye's words, “Every attempt to modernise audit has been aimed at the auditor's desk.” Mallion says, “We are not changing what an audit is. We are changing how it is delivered.” Benford says it wants to skip the middleman and be the auditor itself, rather than selling software to other audit firms. It is aimed at small and mid-sized companies.
AuditOS builds what Benford calls a single “audit brain” from a client's systems, so every test is logged, traced to its source and assigned to a named auditor. Follow-up questions are handled in one shared place rather than across email, and work carries over from one year to the next. We did not find named clients, and we could not confirm that Benford currently carries out UK audits, so check this before relying on a London role.
Benford says it is hiring across audit and engineering, so the team is a mix of qualified auditors and software engineers working closely together. Being so small, people are likely to see how a whole audit runs and have a say in how the tools develop, though that is our reading rather than a company claim. We found no graduate scheme, apprenticeship or internship information, so anyone interested should ask the company directly.
Website: benford-tech.com
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