Risk and audit at a glance

The Public Trustee has an Audit and Risk Management Committee to provide independent assurance to the Public Trustee by overseeing and monitoring the risk and control frameworks, internal audit and external accountability requirements. The Committee is responsible for approving a rolling three-year Internal Audit Plan that is delivered by the Public Trustee’s (outsourced) internal auditors and is developed with regard to the Public Trustee’s operational and enterprise risk registers.

Fraud detected in the agency

NB: Fraud reported includes actual and reasonably suspected incidents of fraud.

An internal review detected a third party had fraudulently altered an invoice and amended bank account details to their own. The matter was reported to Police and is under investigation.

Strategies implemented to control and prevent fraud

The Public Trustee has in place a number of management systems, policies, controls, training and procedures directed at preventing, detecting and minimising the risk of fraud.

The Public Trustee assesses the risk of fraud as part of its Risk Assessment Process, with identified risks reviewed at least annually. Fraud risk and control assessments are also conducted as part of the Public Trustee Internal Audit Plan.

During the year the internal auditors conducted a review of the Public Trustee’s processes and controls to manage and protect customers’ personal information and consider safeguarding information and prevent breach in privacy and exposure to fraudulent activities.

The low value fraud incident noted above resulted in a tightening of vendor  management controls and training on fraud identification and reporting.

Data for previous years is available at: https://data.sa.gov.au/data/organization/attorney-general-s-dept

Public interest disclosure

There were no occasions on which public interest information has been disclosed to a responsible officer of the agency under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2018:

Data for previous years is available at: https://data.sa.gov.au/data/organization/attorney-general-s-dept

Note:  Disclosure of public interest information was previously reported under the Whistleblowers Protection Act 1993 and repealed by the Public Interest