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“This represents one of our most significant investments in the future of audit,” said Grant Thornton CEO Ron Messenger in a statement. “We are transforming how we audit and how we serve our clients, moving toward a data-led model that improves both the quality and efficiency of our work. By automating the transactional parts of the audit, our teams can focus their time where it matters most: helping clients by exercising professional skepticism and judgment, assessing risk and delivering real-time insights that help drive trust in the capital markets.”
At the most basic level, gtap—which stands for Grant Thornton Analytics and Automation Platform—is a cloud-based platform that functions as the new foundation for how GT will deliver audit services. Previously, audits were conducted using a mix of separate tools plus a great deal of manual work. Auditors would pull data from one system, reformat it somewhere else, build workpapers by hand, and then stitch everything together. A GT spokesperson said this worked but was slow and clunky.
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Gtap replaces all the disparate audit tools used previously into one intelligent and connected platform that pulls raw financial data directly from a client’s systems, cleans and standardizes it automatically, and then produces audit-ready workpapers and analyses, the preparation of which used to be highly manual. It also lets auditors look at every transaction, not just small samples.
The spokesperson said gtap was built to support AI from the very start. AI agents and other tools running on the platform will be able to autonomously handle routine audit tasks, spot unusual activity and anomalies in large data sets, and surface risks earlier. The spokesperson said these capacities will grow as the AI learns more and technology improves. The platform is intended to grow and change alongside AI as a whole.
For an auditor, this means a lot of the busywork that had characterized their specialty may become unnecessary, as the platform automates data collection and standardization, analyzes the entire data population, and generates workpapers. And because all audits are now on the same platform with the same data model, engagements can be performed much more consistently and improvements will scale across the entire practice. On the client side, there will be less need for back-and-forth with the auditors, as the platform works with data from virtually any system so there is less need for reformatting or follow-up requests. Further, as the data is analyzed with AI earlier and more completely, clients can also see potential issues and trends sooner, rather than discovering them late in the process.
The technology was first developed by Grant Thornton Ireland for use in its market, and then enhanced as part of a collaborative effort with Grant Thornton’s U.S. technology team. Grant Thornton will introduce gtap first with private company audits before expanding into public company audits next year as part of a phased rollout to the full U.S. audit and assurance practice.
The firm intends to grow gtap over time. Beyond its initial capabilities, the infrastructure is designed as the foundation for an agentic audit model where intelligent agents will increasingly orchestrate audit activity, continuously assess risk and adapt procedures as new data emerges.
“As AI advances, gtap will advance with it,” said Mike Kempe, chief information officer of Grant Thornton Advisors LLC, in a statement. “The future depends on delivering audits that have more autonomy, generate better insights and are more aligned with how modern businesses operate.”
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