SEC Secretary-General Rapee Sucharitkul revealed that “independence of the auditor is a key factor in establishing the reliability of the financial reports. When the international standards on this matter are changed, SEC must revise the rules on the rotation of auditors accordingly. SEC has recently revised the rules on rotation of auditors of listed companies and will likewise revise such rules for property fund, infrastructure fund, REITs, and infrastructure trusts. The auditors must be rotated off after 7 cumulative years of service and must serve a cooling-off period for 5 consecutive years, while the existing rotation period was 5 years and the existing cooling-off period was 2 years. The revision will be effective from 1 January 2019”.

To mitigate impacts at the initial phase of the enforcement of the revised rules (2019-2023), SEC will give a grace period, during which the cooling-off period of the outgoing auditors may be less than 5 consecutive years but shall not be less than 3 consecutive years; and SEC allows the auditors in a small audit firm to perform duties for more than 7 cumulative years but no more than 9 cumulative years. As the grace period is applicable to the auditors, it is deemed to be applicable to property fund, infrastructure fund, real estate investment trusts and infrastructure trusts as well.