Business Audit

Carr Maloney’s Business Audit Practice Group provides integrated business solutions for small businesses, corporations, and associations. The combined experience of the team serves clients in areas that, if not addressed, could lead to serious violations of the law, fines, and possible charges. 

Our Business Audit attorneys have extensive experience working with clients to strengthen their business practices in areas including but not limited to:

The Audit Process

To make certain that companies are compliant and using best practices for critical processes, the Firm’s Business Audit Practice Group conducts a thorough audit of key areas that concludes with recommendations for changes in procedures and policies in areas including employment, social media and cloud-based computing, vendor contracts wage/hour, and insurance. Employment policies and procedures can be a minefield of potential violations for the untrained business owner or manager.  

The use of social media, cloud-based computing networks and open source technology makes businesses of all sizes vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data breaches. The business audit serves to minimize the severity of these incidents by assessing vulnerability to third party attacks, proactively developing information security and privacy controls, and providing continuing education and support to minimize the risk of such occurrences.

Immigration 

In addition to the direct business immigration services the Firm provides, Carr Maloney’s highly experienced immigration attorneys understand the critical need for businesses to maintain in compliance with the multitude of complex immigration laws, regulations and system requirements throughout operations. To satisfy that need, Carr Maloney provides its clients with detailed, specialized immigration audit and compliance services including: practical training programs with respect to the crucial reporting and record-keeping requirements of the I-9 and E-Verify systems; conducting internal I-9 audits (including important practical considerations during mergers, acquisitions and corporate restructuring); Immigration and Customs Enforcement audits, assessment of internal policies and E-verify participation and compliance.  

Employment and Labor Law

In today’s market, you can’t afford to ignore potential risks in employment practices. As state and local jurisdictions across the country increasingly enact their own minimum wage, paid sick leave, and other wage and hour legislation, multistate employers face a complex and shifting regulatory landscape. As a business, your employment practices should be effective, streamlined throughout your business, and minimize the exposure to potential litigation. Our Business Audit Practice Group collaborates across practice areas and industry groups to address specific types of matters including: 

Insurance

Risk management is a critical step to protecting your business from potential losses due to events that you cannot predict. Ensuring that your insurance coverage is sufficient through a risk management audit will help protect your organizational assets and mitigate catastrophic risk. Events that may affect your company’s objectives under a risk management framework are varied, and can include competitive forces, economic trends, changes in regulatory requirements, and even internal issues with your workforce or infrastructure.

The Carr Maloney Insurance Risk and Policy Audit team provides the following services to ensure that your insurance programs accounts for these risks: 

Review Contracts: Reviewing contracts entered by our clients to assess certain requirements in regards to insurance coverage that must be obtained and indemnification obligations that may be owed. 

Review Insurance Policies: All insurance policies must be reviewed to confirm whether the required insurance coverage has been obtained as required per the terms of the contracts. We can also analyze the various contractual indemnification obligations that may arise under the terms of the contracts and assess whether there is sufficient coverage for such contractual indemnification obligations under the insurance policies. This includes an analysis of whether the policies contain an exclusion for contractual liability and whether the policies include additional insured endorsements and/or additional named insured endorsements as may be required by the contracts. Any potential deficiencies or gaps in coverage will be identified so that the client may make informed decisions as it seeks to obtain or renew insurance policies. 

Review Prior Claim Information: We also can review prior claim information, including types of claims, nature of claims, and amount of claims to determine what risks the client has faced and is anticipated to face in the future. If any of the client’s insurers have previously denied coverage for any claims or reserved their rights as to any claims, we can address potential ways to avoid such coverage disputes in the future. 

Policy Limits and Provisions: We can review the insurance policies and their endorsements against the client’s business needs to see whether there is sufficient coverage under the policies, both in terms of policy limits and in the policy provisions, to cover the client’s risks. We undertake a complete review of all of the policies to note any policy language or endorsement which would limit potential coverage for the various risks faced by the client. We will assess if the policies contain anything that may be detrimental, i.e. endorsements that may take coverage away, defense costs within limits, definitions which limit coverage, large deductibles, wasting limits, no aggregate limits for certain types of policies, lack of contractual liability coverage, etc. We can then make recommendations for potential requests for changes in policy coverage or language to meet the client’s risks, which the client can use during its discussions with its insurance broker.