Feature

CIMA, ACCA and Professional
Accountancy Qualifications

Rahman Sobhan

RECENTLY, I had the opportunity to visit Dubai. It was a remarkable experience, not so much so in terms of enjoying the view of the city skyline but the way I reinvented accounting as a profession. It was akin to reinventing the wheel, as it were. In many instances I found that the image of an accountant is somewhat distorted. Accountants are typically perceived to be number-crunchers. I went to a foreign exchange where an advert displayed the accountant to be paying out staff salaries at the end of the month, portraying cashiers as accountants.

The phenomenon reminds me of a famous saying in English which goes like this, 'Morning shows the day' although it does not all the time. However, we use indicators to have estimation towards the reality from an external point of view. For example, the level of attention in your prayers indicates or reflects the depth of belief within you. Likewise, the level of professionalism and advancement of a specific country in Finance, compliance and in the sphere of Accountancy Practices could be judged through their professional qualifications. That is why the Emiratis may have a different 'take' regarding accountants than the English do. Although I am quite pleased to see that the level of professionalism in Corporate Dhaka is higher than that of Dubai in general, my experience in Dubai posed a serious question in my mind - what is the perception of average Bangladeshis regarding Accountants, accountancy qualifications and the profession of accounting?

International Standard accountancy qualifications such as CIMA, ACCA reflects the level of regulatory compliance, accountancy practices and professional standards reached in United Kingdom in the field of Accountancy and Finance. Similarly CPA reflects the high level of professionalism, accountancy practices and regulatory compliance achieved in USA. These qualifications could categorically be termed as benchmark global accountancy qualifications. However, if UK and USA were not at the forefront in the field of Accountancy & Finance, their qualification would not have been of such high caliber.

Speaking personally, I had little exposure to the usual double entry accountancy basics whilst studying towards my CIMA professional qualification. Some of my tutors, despite their lifelong involvement in accountancy & finance, admitted that they were also not very capable when it came to performing journal entries. The reason being, UK/USA has various accountancy software packages which allow journal entries and they are used extensively in various organisations. It is not unlikely to observe that interviewers commonly look out for accountancy software skills of a candidate. In most cases it is an essential criterion of a candidate to have exposure to Sage, SUN, Oracle etc accountancy packages. The effect is, an evolution of accountancy practices where the interpretation of accounts, its implications in business and the extrapolation of accounting information is more important than mere number crunching.

Accountants are not bookkeepers, number-crunchers or cashiers. They are professionals who provide accounting information to management, raise financial reporting standards and endeavour to meet local/international regulatory compliance. That is why professional qualifications Emphasise so much on interpretation of accounts and case-based scenario questions that require financial analysis and critical evaluation. Although the emphasis may vary from one qualification to another. Therefore, no matter what a student's natural capabilities are & what the student is looking to gain from their professional qualification, they should choose a tuition provider of international standard. Professional qualifications are challenging and failure is not uncommon. However, a quality tuition provider would greatly reduce the chances of mishap and increase your potential to succeed significantly. Also, those who pass first time pays less in terms of tuition fees and examination fees.

ACCA (an excellent qualification to have under your belt) emphasises financial accounting and CIMA focuses more on management accounting. In layman's term, while ACCA focuses on preparation of accounts and providing accounting information to management, CIMA takes it from there and focuses more on how this accountancy information could be used to generate business, financial as well as risk and control strategy. ACCA's nature enables student to provide excellent feedback & CIMA reflects prudent feed-forward thinking. My friends and colleagues who completed ACCA like to think that ACCA is more focused towards external customers & stakeholders of business, whereas CIMA has a more 'insider' approach & caters for internal customers primarily. Having said all those, both qualifications are top-notch and there are overlapping areas in ACCA and CIMA syllabus and the generalisation above is not typical. Many of what CIMA qualifies could be performed by ACCAs and vice-versa.

However, ACCA is very popular in Bangladesh and rightly so. But CIMA is nowhere near as popular despite being a qualification of similar calibre. In fact, recent salary surveys suggest that CIMA members get higher salary than ACCA qualifieds (by apprx. 18%). This information is in no way intended to put one qualification over another because I already mentioned that both qualifications are equally challenging, rewarding, and sought-after and salary surveys at a given time in a given market reflects market conditions. The information is served here to those who argue the superiority of one over another. This is also a CIMA response to a somewhat popular notion that somehow ACCA is better than CIMA-which is furthest from the truth. In most cases, Students who prefer preparation of accounts and financial accounting go for ACCA whilst students with a knack towards interpretation, analysis and application of accounting information (and not so much so in terms of preparation of accounts) opt for CIMA. Moreover, I have many friends & colleagues who have completed ACCA and then went for CIMA and vice-versa.

Being a member of CIMA I wish to talk a little more about CIMA. CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) is an excellent professional qualification. It is not as popular in Bangladesh as ACCA although some multinational companies are well acquainted with CIMA, thanks to ICMAB. But CIMA is not directly linked to the Institute of Cost and Management Accountancy Bangladesh although collaboration may exist. It is high-time that students in Bangladesh planning to persue/advance a career in accountancy and finance wake up to the reality of CIMA. In a typical ACCA lecture there would be many Bangladeshi students whereas I was the solitary student of Bangladesh to undertake CIMA lectures (based on my experience whilst studying in London). Pakistan, India is well ahead of Bangladesh, and Sri-lanka is being preceded only by UK in the field of CIMA.

CIMA creates business leaders. The emphasis of CIMA is more on analysis, interpretation, application and recommendation based on accountancy information. The scope of CIMA covers management and cost accounting but is not limited to those. CIMA has little scope to learn some accountancy rules and preparation of accounts. Rather it is the interpretation of accounts, application of knowledge and critical evaluation that receives major emphasis. A typical lecture of CIMA paper would involve scenario based questions, real-life examples and business acumen building drills. ACCA has also updated their syllabus and now it is imperative that ACCA students also become more conversed with business world and contemporary issues in global business. In a recent ACCA examination 25 marks were allocated on a UK bank which went bankrupt and subsequently necessitated Government intervention. Such focus on real-life issues is typical to CIMA examinations and good lecturers prepare their students likewise.

(Views expressed here regarding ACCA and CIMA have been included in this article after consulting with present CIMA and ACCA members. Should you have further queries then please contact the writer.

Rahman Sobhan ACMA (London), Lecturer at LCBS, response.s@live.com)