BAHAA ARAFA

Name: BAHAA ARAFA

Position: Director

A CPA and CIA with 20+ years of experience, specializes in IFRS, internal control, and risk audits, providing advisory and audit services across Egypt and the GCC.

Professional Experience:

  • Bahaa has more than 20 years of business experience. He is responsible for delivering IFRS Advisory, Assurance, Risk-Based Internal Audits, Financial Accounting, and Internal Control Review services to different types of clients. This diverse experience helps him to create a broad understanding and skillset, which is particularly valuable for assignments involving value-added recommendations and designing the policies and procedures, process mapping, KPI’s for big companies in the region and covering many functions like Sales & Marketing, Finance, Operation and Purchasing for real estate company, manufacturing. Bahaa started his career with KPMG Hazem Hassan in Egypt and worked in the audit and assurance department. He also previously worked at two big external audit firms in the State of Kuwait, which expanded and widened his experience. He also joined one of the well-known consulting firms in the State of Kuwait. Bahaa joined The Professionals in 2018. He has served several companies in Egypt and the GCC region, predominantly clients working in the Banking, Investment & Financing, Real Estate, and Manufacturing sectors.

Education & Certifications:

  • Bachelor of Commerce, Alexandria University, Egypt.
  • Certified Public Accountant (CPA), AICPA, USA.
  • Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), The IIA, USA.

Areas of Expertise:

  • IFRS & IFRS Convergence: During his work with the previous external audit firms, Bahaa participated in reviewing, verifying, and auditing the financial statements of various companies to ensure that they were complete, accurate, and in compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Bahaa has provided audit & assurance and IFRS consulting services to several different clients operating in several sectors, where he advised clients on accounting policies, internal controls deficiencies, and technical accounting issues. These clients were listed and non-listed clients. Large, medium, and small-sized companies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and within the State of Kuwait. He was leasing a team at one of the big consultancy firms that was responsible for providing IFRS Convergence services. Bahaa has extensive experience in the IFRS Convergence within Saudi Arabia, where he assisted many companies in their convergence processes.
  • Financial Accounting: Previously, Bahaa had joined one of the big investment companies in the State of Kuwait. He was responsible for ensuring that appropriate financial regulations and controls are in place and used effectively and efficiently all the time. Moreover, he was responsible for developing financial and management mechanisms that minimize financial risk in addition to analyzing and classifying risks and investment opportunities to determine their potential impacts on the company’s operations.
  • Internal Control Review: Bahaa conducted Internal control reviews for various companies within the State of Kuwait. His duty was to review the evaluations done by the team to ensure whether the implemented internal control system is effective as intended by the top management. Bahaa’s responsibility was to ensure that the internal controls of his clients are appropriate for managing the risks, are operating effectively and cost-efficient. He provided assessments of the extent to which the controls can be relied upon. Where weaknesses were identified, he looked for the root causes of the issue and made practical recommendations for improvement. These reviews focused on financial reporting, human resources, marketing, sales, budgeting, and procurement.
  • Internal Audit: Bahaa has significant experience in internal audit and is relied upon as one of the main resources in performing the Professionals’ internal audit services. Bahaa has led internal audit projects for different types of clients. His main duties include conducting risk assessments and identifying controls in place to mitigate identified risks, performing audit procedures to verify that controls are operating through testing and interviewing techniques, identifying control gaps and opportunities for improvement, developing recommendations and reports based on audits, and presenting them to the clients’ top management and/or the Audit Committee.
  • Policies and Procedures Preparation: While working with many firms, Bahaa was one of the competent leaders responsible for developing policies and procedures. He managed several wide-ranging policies and procedure assignments for large clients across industries, which involved the development of corporate policies, process objectives, gap analysis, process activities, roles, responsibilities, authority matrix, forms, and templates for the key functional areas.