A leading South Wales business advisory firm has landed record levels of recognition in a major sector survey to strengthen the firm’s position in the UK’s charity auditing market.

Baldwins has been ranked as the best charity auditing firm for overall service in The Charity Finance Audit Survey 2019, which covers nearly 1,200 charities.

Of the charities independently surveyed, 98 per cent of Baldwins’ charity clients rated the expertise and overall service of the auditing as “good.”

Baldwins also improved its charity auditing expertise ranking on the previous year by moving up from fourth to second place.

The firm also moved in to Charity Finance’s top 40 list of charity audit firms for the first time – which are ranked by audit fees – coming in at number 16.

These latest rankings in one of the UK audit industry’s leading surveys represents Baldwins’ highest ever rankings in the 27th edition of the survey.

Baldwins have a 10-strong charity auditing workforce spread across five offices – Aberdare, Cardiff, Monmouth, Newport and Swansea – and audit more than 180 charities.

Sarah Case, who heads up Baldwins’ charity team, said:

“Receiving this high level of recognition is especially pleasing at a time when the audit industry as a whole is under scrutiny from bodies such as the Financial Reporting Council, in relation to the quality of financial reporting that is being produced.

“Charities are also coming under increasing pressure themselves from the Charity Commission to show not only what they do with their money, but how they handle it – so it’s a real vote of confidence for us as a firm to know that we are meeting their expectations in an increasingly scrutinised environment.

“We are consistently leading the way in best practice – which is reinforced by these survey results – and it provides us with a strong platform to recruit the best talent in the industry, while growing our charity client base even further with the assistance of Baldwins’ nationwide offices.”

The organisations surveyed in this year’s Charity Finance Audit Survey had a combined income of £29.9 billion, paying total fees of £29.8 million.