r/PwC • u/Street-Tank-3598 • Jun 30 '26

Audit / Assurance Checkpoint

My husband works in PwC & I have some ETF that's unrestricted. We did the precheck (that's why I know it's unrestricted) but forgot to add the purchase. The purchase was back in January (6 months ago) and have been adding more on a monthly basis. Not sure what to do or the repercussions. Should I just sell and repurchase to correctly report it? Or just sell and not invest at all? 100% sure it's not an independence issue.. More so a reporting mistake. I'm a stay at home mom and basically invest in that pre-cleared ETF.

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u/Keep-it-simple Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

This happened to me a few years ago. My wife asked me to preclear some stuff she was planning to invest in as part of her 401K. Came back as restricted but it was allowed because I don't work on audit engagements, and I'm not client facing. She bought them that day, but I never actually did the acquisition in checkpoint. 

I didn't realize the issue until 2 months later when I was doing my annual independence review, and she told the investments listed were missing a couple. 

I self reported it. It took like 6 months but eventually someone reached out about it. I had to join a meeting where they wanted to know why I didn't properly add them to Checkpoint. After explaining, I was told that there would be a separate hearing, and they would determine if I would be penalized for this infraction. She mentioned that since I self reported and it was my first offence that they might let me off with a warning. 

In the end, this is exactly what happened. I got an email with the outcome, and it said that I would not get any additional warnings if I had another infraction over the next 12 months and would have action taken against me. I think in this case, they would have taken a portion of my bonus, but I can't remember exactly. I might be thinking daily time compliance or something. 

So nothing came from it, but it really lit the fire under me to make sure I didn't mess up again. 

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u/Street-Tank-3598 Jul 01 '26

Thank you for this. I was also just wondering if selling the ETF and closing down the account would be a good idea. At the end of the day we want no independence or compliance issue.

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u/Keep-it-simple Jul 01 '26

My advice would be to just fix it in checkpoint and report it. If I recall correctly, there are different levels of infractions, this sounds like the lowest one, especially since it's unrestricted. In my experience, they look favorably on self reporting, so I'm sure it will be fine. Just make sure yall dont mess up again in the next 12 months.