Corporate audit committee members are getting more tuned in to risk and demanding better quality information in light of recent economic events.

In a recent survey, three-fourths of audit committee members said they are working more "hands on" with management to assess risk management and oversight as a result of economic turmoil. Audit committee members said risks related to the financial crisis and the company's oversight of risk management are the top two agenda priorities for 2009.

"Audit committees are at an inflection point in their taking oversight responsibilities very seriously," said Mary Pat McCarthy, executive director of KPMG's Audit Committee Institute, which conducted the survey with the National Association of Corporate Directors. "They are putting much more time, energy, and thought into exercising oversight in light of the financial crisis."

One of the daunting challenges facing audit committees in this newfound focus on risk is poor quality information, according to the survey results. Audit committee members said they are concerned about the quality of information they receive, particularly as it relates to financial risks posed by the economic crisis, fraud risk, tax risk, and information technology risk.

Two-thirds of audit committee members said they would they want to see more meeting time devoted to dialogue and questions rather than presentations, and one-third said agendas need to be better prioritized with less box-checking. They also called for pre-meeting materials to be more timely and more consise, with more benchmarking against competitors and less extraneous information.

"Audit committee members want to make sure that timely, important things get to them fast," said McCarthy. "They want to make sure they have clear, relevant, focused information."

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