Description

A focused course, tailored for you

The Broker-Dealer Internal Audit Workpaper Playbook

Name: The Broker-Dealer Internal Audit Workpaper Playbook
Price: 199 USD
Availability: InStock

Build a workpaper set that survives Audit Committee scrutiny, external auditor reperformance, and FINRA exam follow-up without rework.

The Reg BI walkthrough narrative is written, the system extract is in the folder, and the workpaper still fails reperformance because the testing step does not tie the disclosure timing back to the trade blotter on a sample of accounts.

$199 one-time

Tailored to your situation. Access within 24 hours. 30-day money-back.

Includes a hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, generated for your specific situation.

Why this course

Internal Audit at a national broker-dealer sits between three readers who all want a different thing from the same workpaper. The control owner wants the narrative to match how the desk actually operates. The external auditor wants the reperformance step to stand on its own without a verbal explanation. The Audit Committee wants the rating, the residual risk, and the one chart that says whether the second line and the first line agree. When the workpaper is written for the narrative reader, the reperformance reader sends it back. When it is written for the reperformance reader, the AC pre-read reads as a wall of procedure. The playbook is twelve worked examples covering the testing areas a broker-dealer Internal Audit team actually owns: Reg BI Care and Disclosure, Customer Protection Rule 15c3-3, Net Capital Rule 15c3-1, AML transaction monitoring tuning, SOX 404 ITGC over the order management stack, vendor SOC 2 bridge-letter review, FINRA 3110 supervision, the Audit Committee memo, the management response tracker, the issue rating calibration, the IA universe refresh, and the year-end opinion letter. Each module ships with a workpaper template, a sample population draw, a reperformance script, and the AC-facing summary.

What you walk away with

Write a Reg BI Care Obligation workpaper whose reperformance step is independently executable from the population draw to the AC summary.
Reperform the 15c3-3 reserve computation against the firm's calculation memo without a verbal walkthrough.
Document AML transaction monitoring tuning evidence that survives FINRA and FinCEN follow-up review.
Deliver an Audit Committee memo that closes on rating, residual risk, and one chart the AC actually looks at.
Refresh the IA universe so the next year-end opinion letter ties cleanly to the risk assessment and the testing plan.

The 12 modules

Module 1. Reg BI Care and Disclosure: from narrative to reperformable testing

The Reg BI walkthrough produces a narrative the control owner agrees with. The reperformance step does not work from a narrative. This module ships the population draw script across rep-level recommendation events, the disclosure-timing tie-out against the trade blotter, the sample size calibration for residual risk rating, and the workpaper template that an external auditor can execute without a phone call. Includes the AC summary chart format that reads on one page.

Module 2. Customer Protection Rule 15c3-3 reserve computation reperformance

The firm's weekly reserve computation memo is the audit evidence. The audit step is reperforming it against the underlying customer credit and debit balances, the qualified securities inventory, and the special reserve bank account confirmation. This module gives you the reperformance worksheet, the haircut treatment for the qualified securities side, the reconciliation step that catches timing breaks, and the exception-handling protocol when the reperformed number differs from the booked number by more than the materiality threshold.

Module 3. Net Capital Rule 15c3-1 haircuts and the early warning workpaper

Net capital testing is not a calculation review. It is a walkthrough of every haircut category against the firm's risk inventory, plus the early warning threshold monitoring the second line claims to run. This module ships the haircut walkthrough template across equity, debt, derivatives, money market, and undue concentration, the early warning monitoring reperformance step, and the workpaper section that ties the firm's reported net capital to the FOCUS Part II filing.

Module 4. AML transaction monitoring tuning: evidence that survives examiner follow-up

AML model tuning is the area where reperformance is hardest because the system is a vendor product and the tuning decisions are documented in a separate memo. This module gives you the tuning evidence template that captures threshold rationale, alert volume impact, false-positive analysis, and the second-line independent review sign-off. Plus the look-back testing protocol when a tuning change is reversed and the workpaper section the FinCEN examiner will read first.

Module 5. SOX 404 ITGC over the order management and clearing stack

The order management system is the system of record for the trade blotter that every front-office audit ties back to. The ITGC workpapers for that stack are the foundation under every operational audit you write this year. This module covers logical access provisioning and revocation testing for the OMS and the clearing platform, change management evidence for release-managed deployments, batch job monitoring evidence, and the population completeness step that external audit will reperform during the integrated audit.

Module 6. Vendor SOC 2 bridge-letter review and complementary user entity controls

Clearing platform, AML vendor, and recordkeeper SOC 2 Type 2 reports arrive with bridge letters covering the gap to year-end. Your workpaper proves the bridge covered the period, the complementary user entity controls operate at the firm, and the carve-out subservice organisations are addressed. Ships the SOC 2 review template, the CUEC tracker, the bridge-letter gap-period testing approach, and the workpaper section external audit relies on for SOX scoping.

Module 7. FINRA 3110 supervision testing: written supervisory procedures vs operating reality

FINRA Rule 3110 supervision is where the WSP document and the operating reality drift over the year. This module gives you the sampling approach for branch and rep-level supervision evidence, the WSP-vs-operating-reality reconciliation template, the heightened supervision tracking workpaper for reps on the firm's watch list, and the AC summary section that reports supervision coverage without naming individual reps.

Module 8. Order routing and best execution: Rule 605/606 evidence

Rule 606 customer disclosure and Rule 605 market centre reports are the public-facing artefacts. The audit step is reperforming the routing decisions against the best execution committee minutes and the venue analytics. This module ships the routing population draw, the venue-by-venue execution quality reperformance, the price improvement and effective spread testing protocol, and the workpaper section that ties best execution to the Reg BI Care Obligation.

Module 9. Cybersecurity testing under Reg S-P and the SEC cyber rule

Cyber audit is no longer an IT-only audit. Reg S-P amendments and the SEC cyber disclosure rule push incident response and material event determination into the IA scope. This module gives you the incident response tabletop reperformance step, the material event determination workpaper, the customer notification timing tie-out, and the AC summary that addresses cyber as a programme, not as a list of penetration test findings.

Module 10. Issue management and the management response tracker

Half the workpaper rework comes from issues that were closed and then reopened by external audit or by the next IA cycle. This module ships the issue rating calibration template, the management response tracker that holds the second-line owner to the original commitment date, the rolled-forward issue inventory format the AC reads quarterly, and the reopening criteria that catch the issues that should not have been closed.

Module 11. IA universe refresh and the year-end opinion letter

The IA universe refresh is the workpaper the external auditor reads to understand your scoping. The year-end opinion letter is the artefact the AC reads to understand whether the second line is functioning. This module ties them together: risk assessment refresh template, audit plan tie-out, coverage gap analysis, the opinion letter format that closes on the rating without burying the qualifier, and the AC follow-up memo when the opinion letter raises a heightened-risk topic.

Module 12. The Audit Committee memo: rating, residual risk, one chart

Every workpaper feeds an AC memo. The AC reads the rating, the residual risk, and the one chart that shows whether the second line and the first line agree. This module is the AC memo template across all eleven prior audit areas, the chart construction protocol, the executive summary format that survives the General Counsel review pass, and the rating calibration discipline that keeps the same audit from oscillating between satisfactory and needs improvement year over year.

How this addresses your situation

Specific modules that map to what you said you are dealing with.

Reg BI walkthrough is written, reperformance step does not tie back to the trade blotter (Module 1).

15c3-3 reserve workpaper relies on a verbal walkthrough with the Treasury team (Module 2).

SOX integrated audit team is asking for the OMS ITGC population (Module 5).

Audit Committee pre-read deadline is the next constraint, and the rating is still under discussion with the second line (Module 12).

What you get with this course

12 modules of written course content with worked broker-dealer Internal Audit examples.
Downloadable workpaper templates for Reg BI, 15c3-3, 15c3-1, AML tuning, SOX ITGC, SOC 2 review, FINRA 3110, Rule 605/606, Reg S-P, issue tracking, IA universe, and AC memo.
Reperformance scripts for every testing module, written so an external auditor can execute without a phone call.
Audit Committee memo template, executive summary format, and the rating calibration protocol.
Hand-built implementation playbook tailored to your audit universe, delivered alongside course access.
30-day money-back if the workpaper templates do not fit your audit shop.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

Within 24 hours: course access provisioned in the Art of Service learning environment, plus the per-buyer implementation playbook tailored to the broker-dealer Internal Audit universe.

Week 1: Modules 1-3 (Reg BI, 15c3-3, 15c3-1) plus workpaper template downloads.

Week 2: Modules 4-6 (AML tuning, SOX ITGC, SOC 2) plus reperformance scripts.

Week 3: Modules 7-9 (FINRA 3110, Rule 605/606, Reg S-P / cyber) plus AC summary formats.

Week 4: Modules 10-12 (issue management, IA universe, AC memo) plus rating calibration protocol.

Before and after

Before

Workpapers pass internal QA, then come back from the external audit reperformance with a request for additional evidence. The AC pre-read takes two extra revision cycles because the rating is debated separately from the residual risk. The same issue closes and reopens across audit cycles.

After

Workpapers are written so the reperformance step is executable from the population draw to the AC summary without a verbal walkthrough. The AC memo closes on rating, residual risk, and one chart on first pass. The issue tracker holds management to the original commitment date and the same issue does not reopen.

What happens if you do not address this

The next external audit reperformance request lands on the Reg BI Care workpaper. The team explains it verbally and the request escalates to a control deficiency. The Audit Committee asks why the second line did not catch it, and the IA opinion letter qualifier moves from a footnote to the body of the memo.

Who it is for

Internal Auditors at US broker-dealers and wealth managers who own a portfolio of regulatory and operational audits, deliver workpapers that external auditors and Audit Committee members read directly, and feel the pressure when a reperformance request lands on a workpaper the team thought was closed.

Who this is NOT for. Not for first-year staff who have never written a workpaper. Not for IT auditors who only test logical access. Not for consultancy auditors who never get an AC reperformance request. Not for compliance testing teams who report into the second line and do not own the IA universe.

How it arrives

Text-based course in the Art of Service learning environment, plus downloadable workpaper templates and worked examples for every module, plus the hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access.

Time investment. 4 weeks at 2-3 hours per week of structured reading, plus the time to populate the workpaper templates against your live audit universe.

Why $199 is the right number

IIA and AICPA broker-dealer audit guidance is the doctrine reference. The audit firm methodology decks circulate internally inside the Big Four broker-dealer practices but are not portable to second-line readers. This playbook is the workpaper layer that sits between the doctrine and the AC memo, written so the testing step is executable without the originating auditor in the room.

FAQ

Does this cover wealth management as well as broker-dealer?

Yes. Reg BI, the Customer Protection Rule, AML, FINRA 3110 supervision, and the AC memo template all apply to the wealth side. The clearing and OMS modules are written for the broker-dealer side and translate cleanly to a wealth platform.

Does it cover the bank affiliate?

No. The course scope is broker-dealer and wealth management Internal Audit. Bank affiliate audits under OCC heightened standards are out of scope. The IA universe refresh module addresses how to scope the bank-affiliate boundary in the IA universe.

How does the per-buyer playbook differ from the course?

The course is the workpaper templates and the worked examples. The implementation playbook is tailored to your audit universe, naming the regulatory audits in your plan for the year and the workpaper sequence that closes on the AC pre-read deadline.

How is the course delivered?

Written modules plus downloadable workpaper templates plus the implementation playbook. Audit Committee readers consume written artefacts, so the course is written the same way.

Can my team use this together?

The 199 USD license is single-seat. Team-licence pricing is available on request and is structured around the IA staffing model rather than per-seat.

30-day money-back guarantee. If after a week of working through the materials this is not what you needed, reply to the receipt email and a full refund is processed. No questions, no forms.

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.