Advanced Stage Exam Results

The results of the ICAEW July 2013 Advanced Stage examinations were published by the ICAEW on Friday 30 August 2013.

In summary  the results were:

Paper	Entry	Pass Rate %
Business Reporting	2,472	78.7
Business Change	2,380	83.9
Case Study	2,116	75.4

Congratulations to those who passed, and commiserations to those who didn't.

ICAEW and CIOT Offer Fast Track To Joint Membership

The ICAEW and CIOT have announced a fast track scheme to joint membership of the two professional bodies, that will enable successful students to join both bodies within three to four years (faster than using the traditional route of ICAEW first then CIOT).

The programme includes a new paper "Taxation of Major Corporates" which, given today's PAC report on HMRC and the ongoing media frenzy over multinational tax avoidance, is clearly relevant to those with a penchant for tax.

Here is the full text of the announcement:

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) have launched a Joint Programme enabling students to simultaneously achieve two prestigious qualifications – the ICAEW chartered accountancy qualification, the ACA, and the Chartered Tax Adviser qualification, the CTA.
 
Those students who successfully complete this route, which is likely to take three to four years, will be eligible to apply for membership of both ICAEW and CIOT – providing they have undertaken relevant professional work in tax and accountancy during their studies. This could be quicker than if they had followed the traditional path of training to become a CTA after qualifying as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant.

Within the Joint Programme there will be separate routes to qualification for those specialising in direct and indirect taxation.

Mark Spofforth, ICAEW President said:
“The Joint Programme is designed for the most dynamic and talented corporate tax professionals who are ambitious to rise quickly to the senior levels of the profession.

“Under this new programme, students complete all the requirements for the ACA and CTA in a way which considerably reduces the study overlap, time out of the office, and tuition costs.

“It still enables the employer to be confident that the student has gained the relevant skill set required for an accountant ready to advise on tax at the highest level. The combination of two well respected and high quality programmes will help employers offer their employees a more efficient route to become tax specialists.”

Patrick Stevens, CIOT President said:
“The CIOT and ICAEW have worked closely with professional services firms to create this flexible new programme for those specialising in tax. It has been designed for students dealing with the tax affairs of FTSE 350 companies or other large corporates from the start of their training. It also has a route suitable for those specialising in indirect tax.

“As well as drawing on the existing strengths of the two qualifications it incorporates a new, specially developed paper, Taxation of Major Corporates, which has been developed jointly by ICAEW and CIOT. This paper has a strong practical focus and deals with the kind of corporate transactions that students will find relevant to their employment.”

Paul Morton, Global Head of Tax at Reed Elsevier, added:
“The challenges faced by our department are very demanding so we look for new team members to be highly knowledgeable. We can be sure that a tax professional who has the ACA and CTA qualifications will have all of the technical skills needed to succeed in our team.”

Contacts
CIOT: George Crozier on 020 7340 0569 or 07740 477374 (gcrozier@ciot.org.uk)
ICAEW: Caroline Florence on 020 7920 8564 or 07973 400 264 (caroline.florence@icaew.com)

Notes to editors

1. For links to further information and brochures please go to www.icaew.com/aca-cta or www.tax.org.uk/aca-cta.
2. ICAEW is a professional membership organisation, supporting over 138,000 chartered accountants around the world. Through our technical knowledge, skills and expertise, we provide insight and leadership to the global accountancy and finance profession.Our members provide financial knowledge and guidance based on the highest professional, technical and ethical standards. We develop and support individuals, organisations and communities to help them achieve long-term, sustainable economic value.
   Because of us, people can do business with confidence.
   ICAEW is a founder member of the Global Accounting Alliance, which represents around 785,000 of the world's leading professional accountants in over 165 countries around the globe, to promote quality services, share information and collaborate on important international issues.

Professional Stage Exam Results September 2012

The ICAEW have released the results of the Professional Stage Exam sat in September 2012.

A total of 2,972 students sat the September 2012 session. 6,450 papers were attempted in total, with 2,220 students passing all the papers they took. 846 students passed the Professional Stage this session, with 604 of these not failing any papers.

Paper	Entry	Pass Rate %
Business Strategy	1,036	87.1
Financial Reporting	1,193	75.6
Financial Accounting	983	89.6
Audit and Assurance	1,209	88.0
Taxation	1,136	88.7
Financial Management	893	86.8

Evidently Financial Reporting proved to be somewhat problematic for many candidates.

Global Ambitions Chinese Whispers

The dangers of the ICAEW's global ambitions are revealed by a question posed at the ICAEW council meeting by Alan Livesey.

Accountancy Age report that he raised the problem of students in China (where the ICAEW has recently opened a new office, to great fanfare) passing their exams without ever having paid their membership.

The institute's board was taken aback by the suggestion, and promised to investigate.

Size Doesn't Matter

Accountancy Age reports that the latest survey of accountancy by the Professional Oversight Board shows that ACCA had 137,233 members worldwide in 2009, up from 131,398 a year earlier. The ICAEW saw member numbers increase to 134,698 from 132,411.

ACCA is now larger than the ICAEW.

Sadly this may be used by the ICAEW as an excuse to dilute the brand by making it easier to join the ICAEW.

A quote by "Peter" on the AA website alludes to the fact that this is already happening:

"If the ICAEW is more elitist as the second comment claims why is it the case that they now allow members of other chartered institutes, ie CIMA, ACCA, to become ICAEW members (through the Pathways to Membership programme) without even taking the exams of the ICAEW after they have been fully paid up members of their own institutes for 5 years.

The ACCA and CIMA would only allow members of the ICAEW to become members of their institutes after passing the final exams of their respective institutes regardless of how many years they have been members of the ICAEW."

In From The Cold

Ernst & Young will take ICAEW students again, having abandoned the ICAEW at the turn of the century in favour of ICAS.

However, Ernst & Young will continue to use ICAS.

Diluting The Brand

A fellow member of the institute wrote to me today, voicing his fears over the dilution of the ICAEW brand wrt less demanding entry requirements for members of the profession who qualified in India and Pakistan.

"I recently discovered that ICAP(Pakistan) members just need to pass ICAEW 4 papers to become ICAEW members. Moreover ICAP members do not need to undergo any training with ICAEW ATO.

In past (until last wk) ICAP members needed to pass ICAEW 4 papers plus undergo 2 yrs training with ICAEW ATO to become ICAEW member, but now ICAP members do not need to undergo any training.

I do not know why ICAEW is giving its membership of other institutes members in this way. If ICAEW does not want other institute's members to undergo any training in ICAEW ATO (which is main strength of ICAEW), then I have to say merger with ACCA is a better option....

ICAEW has given more relaxation to ICAI(India) members."

Anyone from Moorgate care to comment?

Ethics - ICAS Leads The Way

ICAS is leading the way when it comes to ethics:

- They introduced a dedicated ethics exam in 2007
- They are considering a voluntary ethics "test" for CPD
- They are considering introducing an annual ethics statement for members
- In 2008 they will publish a number of case studies of ethical dilemmas experienced by ICAS members

Source "Bean Counters or Business Leaders?"

ICAEW does not even have a dedicated ethics exam, why not?

Why is the ICAEW lagging behind ICAS when it comes to ethics?

Diluting The Brand

The ICAEW, having failed to dilute the brand by merging, has found another way to dilute it. This time via the old trick of dumbing down the exams, and extending time period needed to qualify.

Rob Lewis quotes Raymond Madden, the Institute's executive director of learning and development:

"Instead we said you can take as long as you like, but you can only attempt each paper a maximum number of four times.

Theoretically you could do one paper a year and take fifteen years, but the chances are you wouldn't get a job with a firm. The market manages [the time-bar] for us."

He added:

"We are more flexible than we used to be..."

Lewis notes that the 12 papers that need to be sat at the professional stage can be taken anywhere in the world by home-studiers, who have never done a day's accounting in their life.

Students can take exams at their own convenience.

The desire of the ICAEW to grow in size is undermining the value of the qualification.

The ICAEW should remember that strength comes from quality, not quantity.

Irony

The results of the "Old Professional Stage" ICAEW December 2007 - Professional stage examinations make interesting reading.

In as much as the lowest pass rate (51.1%), was in the Accounting Paper.

Somewhat ironic for a profession of accountants.

Look East

The ICAEW is looking Eastwards as it attempts to increase its size. It has announced a deal with the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA) to award credits to each other's examinations.

An agreement will mean that CICPA members, who have passed all five subjects of the CPA Uniform Exams, will be awarded credits in the professional stage of the ICAEW's ACA qualification.

Richard Dyson, ICAEW president, said the agreement between the two parties is "one more step forward in helping to create a global accountancy profession".

Size of course is not everything, quality is the key issue.

Dyson, as if anticipating the above comment, went on to say:

"By providing mutual credits for prior learning, we are making it simpler for members of both the ICAEW and CICPA to achieve qualifications which will enable them to work in each other’s territories."

So long as this does not dilute the ICAEW brand, or expose the ICAEW to ethical problems, then in theory this agreement should cause the ICAEW no problems.

The devil is in the detail.

Ethics

I see that the ACCA have launched an ethics module as part of a drive to make ethics pervasive in the ACCA's exam syllabus.

Given that the ACCA believes that it is important to have a separate ethics module, and ICAS is introducing more ethics courses to its CA syllabus, why did the ICAEW abandon its plans for a separate ethics exam in 2005?

Ethics

Accountants and business leaders in Scotland are to receive more ethics teaching from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland in an effort to improve public trust in financial reporting.

The institute also plans to introduce more ethics courses to its 'CA' qualification, in order to restore the public's trust in the financial services industry and business ethics as a whole.

This is precisely why the ICAEW should not have abandoned its plans in 2005 to have a separate ethics exam.

Destroying The Brand

Accountancy Age report that the ICAEW has launched a campaign in Malaysia that seemingly sells the ACA qualification on the cheap, by offering members from rival bodies an ACA "without study or formal exams".

The advert appeared in Malaysian business magazine, The Edge. However, it has yet to appear in the UK.

I wonder why?

Age quote the ICAEW's response to the criticism, noting that candidates would still be "rigorously assessed" by an assessment committee:

"If this has been misinterpreted, for whatever reason, then details will be clarified at the workshops promoted by the advertisement. ICAEW is committed to attracting high-quality applicants through this innovative scheme which is receiving popular support in Malaysia."

Here are a few questions for the ICAEW:

1 Why is this ad campaign being run only in Malaysia, and not the UK?

2 Is Malaysia being used as a test bed for the advert, to see how strongly the members of the ICAEW react?

3 Why was the adverse reaction to the campaign not foreseen? Is this not what we pay PR and media people for?

4 Why are we offering our qualification to people without making them sit exams?

Inspiring Confidence?

Why did the ICAEW need to recruit 125 more staff in 2006?

Why do they need to put the fees up by 4%, given that they show a net income of almost £1M in 2006?

Why did the ICAEW backtrack on the setting a separate ethics paper?

CA Qualification To Be Offered Outside The UK

ICAS is to offer its CA Qualification outside the UK for the first time. ICAS will offer students in Luxembourg the CA course.

ICAS Chief Executive, Anton Colella said:

"We are breaking new ground by taking the CA qualification outside the UK and onto the continent.

We are responding to clear employer demand for our qualification, which is regarded by many as the 'gold standard' in accountancy training. CAs work successfully in a global business environment – so it made sense to offer business outside the UK the chance to train the leaders of the future through our CA programme."

John Li, Managing Partner, KPMG in Luxembourg said:

"We welcome this excellent initiative from ICAS... We have found that the CA is admirably equipped to satisfy these and other demands from our clients and KPMG are therefore delighted to be at the forefront of supporting this initiative."

Why doesn't the ICAEW opt for in house training, instead of farming it out to third parties?

The ICAEW could then offer its qualification globally, and earn money for doing so, without diluting the brand.

Ethics

Despite a recent report in Accountancy Age, quote:

"The ICAEW is revamping its syllabus for 2007, with a focus on ethics and allowing employees to choose modules relevant for their trainees".

It seems that the ICAEW will not be setting a separate Ethics paper in the revamped syllabus. This is somewhat baffling, as in 2005 the ICAEW had decided that the subject of Ethics was so important that it deserved a separate paper.

Whilst Ethics can be covered to a limited extent in the other papers, the ICAEW has sent entirely the wrong signal to the world by not setting a specific paper on the subject.

Congratulations

Congratulations to the students who passed the ICAEW December 2006 Professional Stage exams, with stunning results.

I used to mark the auditing PEII papers in the early 1990's, and the pass rates then were far lower.

Evidently, today's students are far brighter than those that I marked in the 1990's.

That can be the only explanation.

Volunteers

A fellow FCA informs me that the executive of the ICAEW have a new word that they use to describe us, the membership of the ICAEW.

They refer to us as "volunteers".

Now correct me if I am wrong, but the ICAEW is not a political party, a charity or indeed a voluntary organisation.

In order to be able to use the designatory letters ACA or FCA, after passing the exams, you have to pay an annual membership fee to the ICAEW.

The ICAEW is a closed shop, not a voluntary organisation.

The fees collected from the membership pay the handsome salaries of "our" executive officers, and are used to pay for failed PR campaigns to try to persuade the membership to support mergers.

To refer to us as "volunteers" is not only arrogant and patronising, it demonstrates how out of touch the executive of the ICAEW has become with the membership.

Should you want to change the status quo, then please help me find 10 ICAEW members living in Croydon who will nominate me for Council.

Thank you.

Ken frost MA FCA FIPFM

Breaching The Walls of The Bunker

Executives around the world believe that it takes companies slightly more than three years to recover from a crisis that damages their reputation.

That at least is the conclusion drawn from to market research carried out by Burson-Marsteller.

The research is based on the opinions of 685 business "influentials" - CEOs, senior executives, financial analysts, business media and government officials in 65 countries.

It shows that quickly disclosing the details of a scandal or corporate misstep should be management's top priority, as it begins the process of restoring corporate reputation.

The latest research conducted by the firm took a closer look at the crisis
management strategies that a company should use to protect, manage and build its reputation.

According to the market research, the top ten crisis management turnaround strategies are:

-Quickly disclose details of the scandal/misstep (69%)
-Make progress/recovery visible (59%)
-Analyse what went wrong (58%)
-Improve governance structure (38%)
-Make CEO and leadership accessible to the media (34%)
-Fire employees involved in the problem (32%)
-Commit to high corporate citizenship standards (23%)
-Carefully review ethics policies (19%)
-Hire an outside auditor for internal audits (18%)
-Issue an apology from the CEO (18%)

Deborah Bowker, chair of Burson-Marsteller's U.S. Corporate/Financial Practice said:

"A crisis can have a devastating impact on a company's reputation in terms of its profitability, credibility, competitive position, and ability to retain and attract top performers.

However, companies can lessen their recovery time and be welcomed back into the fold, with their reputation restored, if they follow a few well executed and integrated turnaround strategies."

Bearing in mind the long list of recent disasters that the ICAEW have inflicted on the membership, and the brand value, of the ICAEW; including, but not limited to, the following:

• The failed merger


• The unseemly public row with ICAS over the name


• Poaching members from other bodies


• Using the services of Media Strategy, a PR company that breached the Code of Practice of the Association of Professional Political Consultants


• Postponing the new exam syllabus until 2007


• Not introducing and ethics paper until 2007


• The Durgan Debacle


• The failure to publish the results of the investigation into the Durgan Debacle


• The failure to conduct an independent review/investigation into the causes of the Durgan Debacle

Do you not think that the ICAEW should take heed of the above advice from Burson-Marsteller?

I certainly do!

The question is, are the ICAEW open to advice from outside the Moorgate Place bunker?