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The Issue

The AICPA Peer Review Board (PRB) has proposed a 2027–2030 Strategic Plan intended to position the Peer Review Program for significant changes affecting the accounting and assurance profession. The plan responds to advances in AI and technology-enabled auditing, evolving firm structures and assurance services, increasing regulatory complexity, demographic pressures on the reviewer pool, and challenges with the program’s existing technology and operating infrastructure.

The proposed strategy includes five major initiatives: modernizing the peer review operating model, building a sustainable reviewer pool, anticipating emerging assurance trends, enhancing stakeholder engagement, and reimagining practice monitoring through more technology-enabled, risk-based, and data-informed approaches.

Our Position

PICPA generally supports the PRB’s strategic direction and believes the plan identifies the right priorities. However, we believe the plan needs greater specificity regarding how its aspirational goals will be translated into practical, measurable outcomes. Successful modernization should preserve rigorous oversight while reducing unnecessary administrative burden and improving the experience for firms, reviewers, and administering entities.

Key PICPA recommendations include:

• Modernize technology and reduce administrative burden. Integrate peer review checklists and workflows into future technology platforms, eliminate duplicate data entry, streamline report acceptance processes, and extensively test technology with actual users before implementation.
• Address AI and technology-enabled audits now. Firms are already using AI, advanced analytics, and automated procedures. PICPA believes the PRB urgently needs practical guidance, training, examples, and evaluation criteria so reviewers can consistently evaluate these engagements.
• Build a sustainable reviewer pool. Reduce the administrative and economic barriers to performing peer reviews, expand practical opportunities for new reviewers, engage more midsize and large firms, and use data to monitor reviewer capacity and specialized expertise.
• Make peer review more proactive. PICPA supports moving beyond a largely retrospective model by developing guidance earlier, creating cross-functional implementation groups, piloting new approaches, and learning from major standards implementations such as the new Quality Management Standards.
• Modernize practice monitoring thoughtfully. Any redesigned model should recognize different legitimate firm methodologies and technology platforms, involve state boards and other regulatory stakeholders early, and consider phased or voluntary implementation where appropriate.
• Reinforce peer review as a quality-improvement process. PICPA believes the program should be viewed as a collaborative mechanism for helping firms improve—not primarily as a punitive compliance exercise. Changing that perception will be important to firm engagement, reviewer recruitment and retention, and the long-term success of the program.

Bottom line: PICPA supports modernizing peer review, but modernization must be practical, technology-enabled, collaborative, and focused on improving audit quality. The program should evolve at the same pace as the profession while reducing unnecessary burdens and continuing to strengthen public confidence.

Comment Letters:
PICPA Comment Letter RE: AICPA PRG Proposed Strategic Plan 2027-2030 - Aug. 28, 2026