Member Engage
ACCA answers your questions
01 May 2008
Allen Blewitt, ACCA's chief executive, and Gill Ball, immediate past president, took members' questions in another successful live broadcast via ACCA's website on 23 April 2008.
Nearly 200 questions were submitted for the event with Allen and Gill responding to issues ranging from global recognition to maintaining professional standards.
If you missed the live broadcast then you can still view the recording at www.accaglobal.com/engage. In the meantime, here are a few highlights…
Maintaining standards
The first question put to Allen and Gill was submitted by Fawad Tariq from Pakistan, who wanted to know what ACCA is doing to maintain the standards of students and the ACCA Qualification.
In response, Allen said: 'ACCA is deeply committed to maintaining standards. Without high quality standards, our reputation would not be what it is now. When we introduced the new syllabus, we not only consulted with a wide range of people but we made sure we met the needs of employers, tuition colleges, students and members as well.'
Allen continued by illustrating that the ACCA Qualification is independently validated: 'We have an independent reviewer and an independent senior examiner, who are making sure that the standards are identical, from year to year. But, being an ACCA member is not just about exams. It's also about practical experience, supervision and maintaining your CPD. So, there is a whole picture of things that we require for people to maintain their standards as an ACCA member.'
Benefits of membership
The topic of discussion then moved towards the benefits of membership. Sherri-Ann Miller from Jamaica wanted to know what members get in return for paying the subscription fees.
Gill highlighted that as a not-for-profit body, ensuring members get value for money was extremely important: 'We're very sensitive to members' needs and we do not wish to make it prohibitively expensive. All our members have the same global qualification, have the same access to many of the global resources and members can benefit from our unrivalled spread of national offices, too.'
Gill went on to outline the wide range of global and national resources available to members. 'Members get support on a global basis, through online resources, technical support, educational support and their CPD activities and so on. Locally, they're getting things which are very focused about their professional world, wherever they are in the world. Finally, members benefit from the brand of ACCA, which is recognised globally, it is worldwide and it's highly valued. So, if you're subscribing to our organisation, it is giving you a global brand which you can trade pretty much anywhere in the world.'
Global recognition
Chris Wills in Germany then raised the issue of ACCA's global recognition, especially as other bodies become more internationally active. He wanted to know what ACCA was doing to protect the status of ACCA.
Allen stated that there were three broad areas where ACCA builds the brand.
'Firstly, we look for statutory recognition where we can - that is, a regulator or a government who will recognise ACCA members as being able to provide public accounting services. Secondly, we go for market awareness. We work with employers, tuition providers and a range of stakeholders to say the ACCA Qualification is valuable. And, finally, we actually want our members to be our advocates as well. We want our members to stand up and be confident about being an ACCA member, because that will spread the word as well.'
This point was echoed by Gill who feels ACCA plays an essential role in the global market. 'We see ourselves sitting alongside many of the national bodies, actually working in partnership. There's plenty of room for everybody in the accounting world. It is about working in partnership and doing the right things for the accounting profession as a whole, and the accounting profession locally, in whichever market we're talking about. In fact, I had the pleasure of recently signing two mutual recognition agreements in Canada and Malaysia.'