Assurance

Limited

• auditor has no reason to believe numbers are wrong
• checking for completeness
• not checking for correctness
• auditor not liable for wrong information deemed correct

Negative

• “nothing is wrong as far as we know from the report”

Reasonable

• auditors need to check for correctness
• auditor not liable for wrong information deemed correct
• threshold of reasonability: $\pm 1\%$

Positive

• “everything looks good”

Independence

• auditor and audited company have to be independent of one another
  • also all people involved in the assessment
• without independence the report is worthless

Difference

• changes of finding problems are way higher with reasonable assurance
• limited assurance: something must be very wrong to show up here
• reasonable assurance: ability to find also small issues and discrepancies