She has built a career based on transforming the financial matters of our country’s public institutions. Devrani Moonsamy is sweeping away years of financial mismanagement to provide better financial systems and ensure clean audits. In October last year, she joined the Ombud Council.
When Devrani Moonsamy joined the Ombud Council in November of last year, the company was in the middle of its financial year, and she had to hit the ground running.
The Ombud Council was newly listed, and Devrani was tasked with guiding her new team in developing systems and processes to achieve the entity’s financial and performance goals, as well as preparing information for audits.
“My role as management was to ensure good quality management and reporting to the chief ombud, chairperson, and members of the board and committees timeously in order to make decisions and comply with all regulations,” she shares.
This is Devrani’s fourth public entity, and she has established an impeccable track record of delivering clean audits over the years. So, when the Ombud Council received a clean external audit opinion status in their latest results, it was another victory for Devrani in her quest to build better governance.
“Achieving a clean audit opinion means that the Ombud Council has complied with all relevant rules and regulations governing financial and performance information,” Devrani explains. “It is a significant achievement because it trumpets the quality of public financial management and governance in spending public funding and building public confidence."
In 2006, she commenced her career in the finance industry as an auditor for the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA). She then got into financial consulting, working at Boxing South Africa and later at Deloitte.
Before joining the Ombud Council, she was the head of finance at the Competition Tribunal of South Africa for seven years, and prior to that, she was the head of finance at the South African Competition Commission.
Aiming for audit success from the onset
Devrani describes how her early career experience as an auditor inspired her advocacy for change in the government sector.
“When I was employed at AGSA, one of the AGSA values was to build public confidence, to audit, and to provide recommendations to be implemented by the management to drive government institutions towards clean audit opinions. The challenge faced then was that year on year the recommendations were not implemented by management and the audit findings would recur," she says.
“This inspired me to join public sector management to implement systems and processes to improve the quality of financial management and reporting to drive entities towards clean audits,” she adds.
According to Devrani, there has been significant progress toward better audits in the public sector, but there is still room for improvement. The AGSA’s audit outcomes for 2022/2023 show that 147 of the 418 entities audited received clean audits, up from 126 in 2021/22. That is an increase in clean audit by 14 percent, which is a significant improvement.
“My inspiration to move over to the public sector was to continue to help build public confidence by improving the quality of financial management and reporting in the public sector.”
Looking into OC’s success story
Some of the factors that contributed to the Ombud Council’s successful audit included good governance and the ability to perform internal audits, Devrani shared.
“The oversight and evaluation played a significant role in ensuring that public resources are used effectively and ethically."
“Another key factor that contributed to the achievement is the implementation of internal audit recommendations, which assisted significantly in preparing for the first external audit. The entity was able to implement controls and make corrections by year end, therefore avoiding external audit findings,” she adds.
Coming full circle in her success
Reflecting on this achievement, Devrani believes that the journey she embarked on through her various roles enabled her to execute her duties at Ombud Council with greater accuracy.
“My knowledge and experience in external audit while I was employed at the AGSA and having managed the finance teams at 3 other schedule 3A public entities prior to joining the Ombud Council helped immensely to achieve the Ombud Council team’s success in achieving this milestone."
“Understanding the overall external audit processes and procedures, as well as the information required by the auditors, helps one set up processes and filing systems within the entity that are driven towards easy accessibility to both internal and external audit requests,” Devrani informed.
Working with an unformidable team
Since working at Ombud Council, Devrani shares that she is grateful to be working with a team that trusts her and greatly supports her. The organisational culture is wonderful, and that contributes positively towards productivity.
She also leads by drawing inspiration from Henry Ford’s words: “Coming together is the beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success.”
“It’s been really impactful and significant in building great team spirit and every 31 July (audit report issue date) since 2012. I look forward to sending that email announcing a clean audit achievement and this very quote. Great things can only be achieved through great teams.”
The future looks “cleaner”
Devrani is excited about her next audit and has already implemented measures to improve financial management and governance practices. These include the maintenance of an efficient calendar where the meeting dates address effective decision-making requirements.
“The structure of when meetings are to be held is important, and planning of when board and committee packs are to be sent out allows management to create systems and processes to meet these timelines. In this way, management works towards ensuring valid, accurate and complete information is ready to be included in board and committee packs for more efficiency.”
She also has a few pointers for other public sector organisations looking to achieve similar success in their financial management and audit results.
“My main objective is creating processes that ensure that the entity complies with all required laws and regulations both finance and supply chain."
“Quarterly reviews of files are essential in ensuring you are ready for upcoming audits. Becoming completely paperless and having a well-managed online filing system makes audits much simpler.”
Devrani concludes by thanking the CFO community for connecting her with like-minded people and providing her with platforms for her to gain, share and learn from others.
“What further helped me improve my financial management over the years is connecting with other finance professionals on different platforms. Sharing different skills and knowledge based on experiences. CFO South Africa is one of these key platforms that connected me to both private and public sector finance professionals that speak the same language."
“I have created lasting relationships with public sector CFOs on that platform, who I can meet and share ideas and challenges. This has benefited me immensely over the years in financial management and coordination of audits towards achieving clean audit outcomes.”
