details of acca

First of all what I am unable to figure out is the logic behind the paradigm shift you are trying to make in your career. Pharmacy to Accountancy!! Hmmm quite a big leap. isn’t it??? What I think perhaps make a better sense is, if you currently not working in a role of accountant, before you decide this shift is to try and identify from where did you pick up this interest in accountancy suddenly.

Regarding opportunities in India for an ACCA qualified person, I am highly skeptical, small to medium sized companies in India do not consider ACCA as a qualification equivalent to CA of India, even most CAs in India have no idea about this qualification and few of them asked me what is this qualification all about etc? However the irony is that Indian CA syllabus is highly outdated and not globally relevant, a fact admitted by its president recently and initiated sea changes to its syllabus effective from 2016. The IFRS and IAS (International auditing standards) convergence are already commenced a couple of years ago and the syllabus has extensive disconnect to this regard.

Short to medium term I do not see small and medium sized employers are even making any effort to know about this qualification, but in the long term they will have no option but to recognize this qualification.

There is a good number of students now in India ( about 3000 as on March 2014) and 234 members for ACCA. Incidentally most students are in the southern region of India, especially Kerala state. The last session out of 46 members more than 26 members were from this state. As you may be aware (or by yourself probably a keralite) a large chunk of kerala population is working in the middle east, where this qualification is widely accepted.

I would say that the chances are bright for an ACCA, not in the short term in India generally. However it is up to you how would you convince the potential employers, which I do whoever I come across with no idea about what a professional qualification is all about. I give hereunder a detailed letter I sent to one of the CFO (CA of India) who questioned that ACCA is not an equivalent qualification to ICAI.

“ACCA is equivalent to qualification of CA in India. When I say equivalency of a qualification it means that the knowledge, expertise, and skills that are gained by a CA of India by his/her studies of ICAI, equals with an individual who gained ACCA and for that matter, we will have to say that all professional accountants (professionally qualified accountants known in different designation in different countries, cor eg. CPA in the US) in this universe possess same level of knowledge, expertise and skills, except country specific statutory laws and tax rules. The financial & management accounting principals, terminology and concepts, the underlying theories of preparing financial statements (P&L, BS), and theories, concepts and techniques involved in financial management, for eg. working capital management techniques, NPV analysis, project appraisals, risk management techniques etc , are not at all to a great extent country specific but common across the world and this is what professional accountants study for their exams in all accountancy bodies across the world. and then put in practice

The only draw back when you have foreign accountancy body membership, if you are intended to practice in your home country is that, you will not be able to conduct public practice, which means you can not take up audit assignments and therefore cannot certify financial statements. The members of ICAI who are working in industry as employee is also not authorized to do such things. And most people who acquires a foreign accountancy membership like me has no intention to do public practice.

The CA course through out the world will have syllabus contains the same learning objectives with papers such as taxation, and corporate law differs regionally. ACCA and CPA only are in best of my knowledge offers students to take this papers of their choice and have an international variant paper. The examinations are paper based and other requirements like practical experience are similar to CA of India.According to me ACCA covered International auditing practices and standards, management accounting, and business management more than any of their other counter parts..

ACCA has presence in most countries in the world with globally relevant syllabus that updates every year and also offers country specific variant papers for taxation, financial reporting and corporate law. I chose global variant for corporate law and financial reporting and taxation UK. The reason being since I have been working in India for more than 2 decades, my exposure to India specific matters was adequate. Also there is not much difference in the taxation and corporate law between these two countries. ( I have enclosed a global magazine called The accountant that will shed light into various aspects of accountancy bodies in the world. Please refer from page no. 18) You can find that there is no such country where ACCA is not present and in some countries they are only 2nd or equal to the local bodyin terms of members and students.

The ICAI curriculum currently is not globally competitive and contemporary and therefore they are planning to make drastic changes to their curriculum from 2016 (enclosed a report in this regard).

ICAI also offers membership to ACCA members who are a foreign citizen of India (The notification of ICAI is enclosed)

Most ACCA members in India have employed with big 4 audit firms, standard chartered bank, shell Ltd etc. (www.accaglobal.com)

To summarize I wish to state that a professional accountant is an individual who is a member of a professional accountancy body and known as professional accountants (chartered accountants in India they are known). In that line I can say that I am a chartered accountant qualified from ACCA (UK). For eg. if you go to any job portal and when you select your qualification section as CA then it will list out the name of institute you are qualified from and ACCA is very much in that list.

I made this submission only to prove my point that ACCA is equivalent to ICAI as a qualification in the field of professional accountancy. ”

I hope this may help