Transparency Report 2023

Thinking about the events of the past year and seeing their impact on people not only here in Canada but all around the world—from geopolitical conflict to the sudden growth of generative AI—we know that holding true to our values and working together, for better, has never been more important.

As a leading professional services firm in Canada, charged with providing assurance to the capital markets, we recognize we are privileged to serve leading organizations, and with that, we have a deep responsibility to many stakeholders. It’s a responsibility we take extremely seriously, which is why quality is at the core of everything we do.

As are our commitments—to integrity, to excellence, to having the courage of our convictions and the highest standards of quality and transparency. We stand by those commitments, we measure them, and we report on them. That is the purpose of this document.

Ultimately, we believe trust is paramount, and we are doing everything in our power to uphold the trust of our clients, of investors, of regulators, of the public—and of our own people. As a “people business,” everything we do both begins and ends with the professionals who have chosen to build their careers at KPMG in service of the public interest. They are passionate about living by our values and always doing the right thing.

We firmly believe that the capital markets benefit from our ability to bring the best minds and specialized skills from across our firm to deliver on the largest and most complex engagements. Key to this is our focus on ESG and upskilling our teams in assurance reporting. With a rising importance the world over for the future health of our planet and our communities, making good on ESG is the central business imperative of our time.

As expectations grow, we continue to enhance our capabilities and invest in technology to continue to deliver audit quality in a data-rich world. That includes continued enhancements of KPMG Clara, our cloud-based workflow platform that delivers smarter, data-driven outcomes and deeper insights. Our strategic alliance with MindBridge, an Ottawa-based global leader in responsible artificial intelligence, further enables the identification of unexpected or high-risk transactions and enhances audit quality and public trust.

Our commitment to investing in leading technology to transform the audit experience for both our clients and our people is not new. We are especially proud of KPMG Digital Academy, a program we launched in 2018 with Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. At KPMG Digital Academy, our people build their skills through specialized courses on the latest advancements in data and analytics, preparing them for the rapidly emerging era of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other digital advances.

At the heart of all of this remains our strong, globally consistent system of quality management that aligns with our Canadian Standard on Quality Management. We take pride in our role in serving the public interest, and our processes reflect the highest degree of independence, accountability, transparency, risk management and firm-wide governance.

We believe you will find that this report clearly demonstrates our enduring focus on audit quality. More than that, we believe it affirms our longstanding commitment to a continuous dialogue with regulators, our clients and our teams toward being the most trusted and trustworthy firm, which is more important than ever in an ever-changing world.