A client-centred approach is at the heart of everything we do at KCG. This explains why we have long-standing relationships with our Member institutions.  

Higher Education institutions become members of KCG because we offer an innovative way of sharing services and costs. We provide the full range of internal audit, risk management, governance and advisory services while ensuring high quality and value. 

Members institutions receive insights from us on best practices seen at other institutions. 

KCG’s competitive edge is its ability to provide genuinely tailored in-house internal audit and risk assurance services at a competitive cost/price to its member institutions.  

Our staff are fully qualified and have significant knowledge and specific experience of Higher Education - we understand the challenges faced by the sector which means that the recommendations we make are sensible and proportionate to the institution. 

We do so much more than tick boxes, we genuinely want to help and support the institutions with which we work – we are your critical friend and adviser rolled into one.   

The KCG audit and risk assurance service is proactive and looks forward, challenging institutions to improve. We take a risk-based focus across all institutional activity so we can best identify and advise on potential opportunities and improvement of services.

We maintain an 'In-house’ arrangement across the membership in place of a commercial contract with members signed up to a Membership Agreement.

All costs are shared between the member institutions in proportion to the amount of work they need. KCG is not profit-making from its membership; there is an exemption from VAT on most of our costs within the cost-sharing group arrangement. 

We charge a composite daily rate for all services. This allows us to allocate staff to an audit regardless of seniority and means that we do not need to push work down to relatively inexperienced or unqualified staff to meet company profit targets. 

KCG's Internal Audit Services are designed to comply with Public Sector Internal Audit Standards and are aligned to the requirements in the CUC Code for Audit Committees. We regularly review our own services to ensure we’re still complying with professional standards. We commission a regular third-party quality assurance review to provide further assurance to institutions that we remain a top-quality audit company; at our most recent review we were assessed as being a 'leading practice', the highest rating possible.

KCG members can play a role in guiding the strategic direction of the KCG internal audit service whilst ensuring operational independence is maintained. 

We have a co-operative legal structure and governance, provided by the KCG Board.