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SubscribeChairman Logothetis Delivers Remarks at the Fall 2026 SEIAG Meeting
Remarks as prepared for delivery
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here. I want to thank all of our SEIAG members for the time, expertise, and candid perspectives you bring to these discussions. Your willingness to engage with us, challenge our thinking, and share what you are seeing across your vast areas of expertise makes our work stronger.
I also want to take a moment to recognize Dominika [Taraszkiewicz] and thank her for stepping into such a critical leadership role. She brings tremendous talent, expertise, and perspective to this work, and I’m grateful for her continued commitment.
Before I go any further, let me give the standard disclaimer that my remarks today reflect my individual views as Chairman of the PCAOB and do not necessarily reflect the views of the full Board, my fellow Board Members, or the PCAOB’s dedicated staff.
I always look forward to these meetings because the perspectives represented around this table are essential to our work. The PCAOB functions best when we hear directly from people across the audit and financial reporting ecosystem who see our work from different vantage points.
And I want to start by briefly going back to our meeting in May, because an important part of these conversations is not only hearing your recommendations, but showing you how we are responding to them.
At that meeting, we heard several themes clearly:
You encouraged us to make inspection reporting more timely, useful, and decision-relevant, including providing greater context around our findings.
You urged us to make sure our agenda keeps pace with emerging issues, including AI or as we are now calling it, superintelligence, and digital assets.
And you encouraged us to make standard setting more collaborative, transparent, and focused.
You will hear about each of those areas in different ways today. And while the work continues, I hope you will see that your feedback is helping to inform the conversations we have and the direction of our oversight activities.
Today’s agenda comes at an important time for the PCAOB. Chairman Atkins and I are determined to make the PCAOB a better regulator.
To that end, across our organization, we are taking a fresh look at how we can become a more modern, effective, and responsive regulator while remaining firmly grounded in our investor protection mission.
One area where you can see that clearly is standard setting.
We are taking a more strategic approach to our agenda, focused on identifying the areas where updating our standards can have the greatest impact. That means thinking more systematically about the framework that guides our standard-setting decisions, taking a risk-based approach to our priorities, and looking for opportunities to align internationally when doing so makes sense.
Our objective is to make sure we are working on the right issues, at the right time, and in a way that responds to changes in the audit environment.
But our responsibility does not end when a new standard or rule is adopted. We also want firms to have the clarity they need to implement our standards effectively and consistently. That means continuing to provide implementation support, guidance, and other tools that help firms get it right as they update their methodologies and processes.
One example is our new Firm Consultation Process, which allows registered firms to bring questions directly to our Office of the Chief Auditor and receive informal staff views on the implementation of new standards and the application of existing ones.
That reflects an important principle for us: effective regulation is not just about writing good standards.
It is about making sure those standards are effectively applied in practice, which is why it is important for us to provide the necessary resources to assist firms in their implementation efforts.
We are also taking a fresh look at our inspections activities. As you will hear in greater detail today, we are looking closely at how we modernize inspections This includes evaluating whether our inspection reports deliver the information investors and other stakeholders need.
These efforts directly relate to what we heard from this group in May. You asked us to think about not just what information we provide, but how useful that information is to the people who rely on it. That is exactly the kind of question we want to continue asking as this work moves forward.
The broader point is that we cannot ask the profession to continually improve while allowing ourselves to become complacent. Markets, technology, and risks change. A strong regulator has to be willing to look critically at its own processes and evolve as well.
That also means looking ahead. Emerging technology, especially super intelligence, is changing how information is produced, analyzed, and audited. That was another issue this group highlighted in May, including the need to consider how our existing standards apply as technology evolves and how the PCAOB can keep pace with developments in practice.
At the same time, longstanding risks like fraud remain central to investor confidence. We are considering whether our requirements should evolve with changes in practice, informed by what we are seeing through our oversight and hearing from stakeholders.
The challenge is to address today’s risks while preparing for tomorrow’s, and I look forward to your perspectives on both.
And that brings me back to why meetings like this one matter.
We do not have every answer inside the PCAOB, nor should we expect to. We need to hear from investors, auditors, audit committee members, preparers, academics, and others across the audit and financial reporting ecosystem about what they are seeing and where they believe risks and opportunities are emerging.
But just as importantly, we want you to be able to see what happens after you provide that input. Closing that feedback loop is important. You should know that your recommendations are being heard and considered, even when we may ultimately take a different approach.
We want your candid perspectives, not simply on the individual items on today’s agenda, but on whether we are focusing our attention on the right places.
And for those who know people who could contribute to these conversations, I would encourage you to help us spread the word that we are currently seeking nominations for both the SEIAG and Investor Advisory Group.
Ultimately, all of these efforts share a common goal: making sure the PCAOB continues to evolve along with the markets and the profession we oversee, while never losing sight of why we exist in the first place: to protect investors and promote high quality, independent audits.
So as you listen to the updates today, I hope you will think back to the conversations we had in May.
Tell us where you believe we are responding to what we heard, where we still have work to do, and what we should be thinking about next.
Thank you.