The Foundation Audit: Why Most Compliance Programmes Are Built on Shaky Ground

Tuesday 4th August, 12:00 EDT

Most businesses audit outcomes. Wrong shipment, late clearance, unexpected duty bill. They fix the symptoms and move on. The companies that actually protect their margins audit foundations. Classification. Origin. Valuation. These three elements sit at the base of every customs declaration your business files. Get them right, and your compliance program works. Get them wrong, and you're overpaying duties, under-declaring liabilities, or walking into an enforcement action you didn't see coming.

This webinar cuts through the noise. We'll cover what a real customs audit looks like when it goes beyond spreadsheet hygiene, examining your data, your people, and your processes together. Because the weakness is rarely just in the data. It's in the handoffs, the assumptions, and the procedures nobody has questioned in three years. You'll leave with a practical framework for identifying where your exposure sits, what it's costing you, and how to close the gap before a customs authority does it for you. 

What we'll cover: 

• Why classification, origin, and valuation failures are still the most common — and most expensive — audit findings 
• How to audit people and processes, not just declarations 
• The ROI case for proactive compliance: where the duty recovery and risk reduction numbers actually come from 
• What customs authorities look for, and how to get ahead of it 

Speaker Info: 

Kyle Grobler has spent 15 years on the inside of global trade, not advising from the outside, but sitting with the exposure, the audits, and the consequences. He has recovered more than €90 million in duties across his career. Not through complexity. Through fundamentals: classification, origin, and valuation. The same gaps. The same cost. Every time. He now brings that experience to DHL Global Forwarding, where he works within Global Customs Solutions.