The shortage of available finance professionals in the Netherlands together with our growth-ambition forced us to think outside-the-box. The opportunity to engage with The Finance Generation by nearshoring our services to our remote Belgrade audit team provided not only a possibility to achieve our goals, it’s also a great joy to work with the professionals from our Belgrade audit team.

We started hiring Serbian colleagues in Belgrade from September 2022 and, at this moment, we have a team of seven professionals. Despite this fast growth, the expertise and drive of the audit professionals in combination with our onboarding process have made it to a success above our expectation. Our focus was to build a full team with different levels of expertise.

Our colleagues from Serbia have a positive work ethic and are eager to learn. This includes an intrinsic motivation about knowledge of Dutch laws and regulations and the curiosity to understand the business of our clients. They all show a willingness to deliver high quality and their documentation skills are outstanding. By training them properly into our way-of-working and explaining the Dutch culture and quality standards, we have experienced that it significantly contributes to our audit quality. Additionally, hiring colleagues in Serbia creates capacity, allowing us to achieve our growth ambition and maintain our work-life balance for the Dutch and Serbian team.

That’s a good question. In principle I would say yes, but sometimes it is more efficient if certain procedures are performed by the Dutch team. Especially when clients don’t speak (proper) English and a face-to-face discussion is needed. Our colleagues from Serbia are fully integrated in our audit teams and depending on the type of client we have found a right leverage between Dutch and Serbian team members. Along the way, we created a process how we make use of the Serbian team. International clients are fully staffed Serbian team. Non-international clients are either staffed 50/50 or fully with a Dutch team depending on the complexity of the client and if the client speaks English. 

The level of English speak- and writing-skills among our Serbian colleagues is high. Our Serbian team members are highly educated professionals who, like in the Dutch education system, receive English lessons already in elementary school. The key of a successful cooperation is to clearly communicate expectations in the early stage of an audit. As audit procedures are documented and communicated in English, their autonomy and ownership grow over time. The team we currently have in Serbia is a high-quality team that is an integral part of our office.

This largely depends on individual personalities, but generally, our Serbian colleagues find it a large contribution to their development to serve our Dutch clients in an international environment. Due to the influence of the Dutch oversight body (the AFM), audit quality is of a very high level in The Netherlands and the colleagues we have hired consciously choose to work at The Finance Generation to perform audits of Western European companies by working for a Dutch audit firm. The possibilities to travel to the Netherlands and other countries, where parts of our international clients are located, is also a big advantage. 

As partner in charge of our engagement I’m responsible for the audit quality of my engagements and this is the most important in our profession. We fully integrate the Serbian team members in our audit process and provide them with all the knowledge they need about the client, specific Dutch laws and regulations and by training them on the job. From that point of view, we do not distinct between Dutch and Serbian colleagues. They are both very valuable to our organization. Furthermore, on office level they attend all technical trainings and in addition, The Finance Generation provides training and in-depth knowledge about the Dutch Culture and general Dutch laws and regulations. 

Our Serbian team members have a strong knowledge of auditing and IFRS. They all continue to study  to finish their ACCA license (if not already achieved), which means they are trained in accordance with the ISA standards and IFRS which is close to the Dutch auditing and accounting standards. 

The review of the work performed by our Serbian team is being done by the Dutch managers / audit seniors on the engagement or directly by myself based on the team and nature and complexity of the audit.

We can scale our business with the help and support of The Finance Generation and are able to continuously serve our Dutch clients with our high-quality audit services without having to worry about Serbian labor legislation, housing and the first layer of the hiring process. It is also nice to have an international working environment and of course, Belgrade is a beautiful city to visit now and then!