Yolandie Nell appointed national head of technical audit at Moore
Accounting and consulting firm Moore has appointed Yolandie Nell as its new national head of technical audit based out of Sydney.
Nell joins Moore after serving as an assurance risk & quality senior manager with PwC in Sydney for the past three years, before which she spent eighteen years with the Big Four firm in South Africa after completing her accounting degree.
As part of her most recent responsibilities at PwC, Nell ran the Australian branch’s ‘Real Time Assurance’ program focused on continuous improvements in audit quality and efficiency, which had previously been an area of growing concern.
“With a strong focus on audit quality, performance and continuous improvement, Yolandie is particularly passionate about the evolving audit and accounting standards landscape,” Moore stated. “She is committed to helping teams not only meet compliance requirements but build trust and deliver meaningful value to clients.”
Moore noted that Nell has served in technical roles for the vast majority of her accounting career, supporting audit teams across a wide range of clients and industry sectors in areas such as audit ethics, training presentations, and through research and thought leadership, in what has been an era of increasingly complex regulation.
After graduating the University of the Free State in 2003, Nell steadily worked her way up the ranks at PwC in South Africa, ultimately becoming a member the firm’s assurance technical & methodology division prior to crossing to PwC’s Sydney office in 2022, where she continued to engage with the firm’s global audit methodology group.
“I’m thrilled to join Moore and work alongside such a committed, respected and connected network of professionals,” Nell said, citing the firm’s ‘clear sense of purpose’ as an attraction. "Audit has always been more than a technical discipline for me – it’s a way to contribute to trust, transparency and better decision making in organisations.”
Meanwhile, Moore said Nell’s appointment reflected the firm’s ongoing investment in people, systems, and expertise to deliver high-quality audit and advisory services, and her provision of practical guidance and insight at the national level was in line with the firm’s broader vision of a locally and internationally connected services team.
Audit quality
Attracting a fair degree of high-level criticism at the time, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) ceased publishing its annual audit inspection report cards on the country’s biggest service providers in 2023, reportedly in part because the media had become too fixated on the declining standards and poor results.
