Haven’t you missed all those exciting events, I ask you

London Society of Chartered Accountants President Viresh Paul’s update on events hosted by the society.

September 2021

The principal role of the London Society, as I see it, is to engage with as many London ICAEW members as possible and show them what the Institute is doing and can do to sup¬port their professional careers, reputation and influence. This is in full alignment with the strategy of the ICAEW.

Post Covid, and I am not sure if we are there yet but I am sure you will understand what I mean, we are working very hard to engage with members. In the past eighteen or so months the task was in a sense pretty straightforward. We knew we could not meet face-to-face and you saw the boom in online events started, possibly, by the London Society with the launch of it’s free, monthly bite-sized webinars. These were launched as part of the initiative of the various area societies that make up LSCA to provide CPD to members who could not attend physical events at that time.

We even held our 150th celebration and the Student’s Reward ceremony online.

Now that we are coming out of that straitjacket the organising of events has become even more complicated as not every-one is yet ready to step out of their homes or attend large gatherings. Whilst some events, like CPD can carry on virtually, there is however a great need to get back to meeting people face-to-face and to this end we organised our first Executive Committee meeting at the ICAEW which had to be held in a hybrid fashion which allowed some members to take part virtually whilst those who were happy to be there in person did so. Our next big event is the main committee meeting which is also being held at the ICAEW in the auditorium where is enough seating for people to sit at a fair distance from each other and from where we will try and conduct a meeting in not a dissimilar fashion as to when we used to meet in the past.

I bring that up because following that meeting which is only open to members of the main committee of the LSCA (and a limited number of observers) we will be holding our first event open to all members of LSCA. The event I am talking about is the Accountants’ FinTech Summit on 28 September which is open to everyone and will be preceded by a networking lunch for which we are making a nominal charge to our members who are prepared to make the commitment to come to the Institute headquarters in London and listen to some eminent speakers on the subject of FinTech. FinTech will feature quite predominantly in the lives of ordinary Chartered Accountant if not today then definitely in the very near future. The booking for that event is already open – see the link on page 3 – and I hope all those who are ready to meet up with more of our members on a face-to-face basis for the first time after so many months will sign up as it will be a prelude to future events and it’s sort of a litmus test of how things can gradually revert back to the old status quo of some sort.

You can also join the event online but if you come to Chartered Accountants Hall you will be able to enjoy a buffet lunch for the same ticket price!

Organising this event has highlighted the problems we are going to face until matters revert to some sort of normalcy. It is our responsibility to organise these events if we are to engage with our members and my committee and I are working very hard to bring to you these events so that you can engage more closely with the ICAEW. In this context we also have one of our flag-ship events coming up on 5 November which is the Pan Accountancy Lunch to be held, as usual, at the majestic Mansion House. I would urge everyone, especially those members have never attended it, to try and attend along with guests or even important clients.

We aim to organise some more events to encourage our members to come back to Chartered Accountants Hall at Moorgate Place which is now partially open along with the business centre facilities as well as the One Moorgate Place club. I was there last week for our Executive Committee meeting and was impressed with the steps that are being taken in line with current regulations to keep everyone safe and secure.

So to revert back to where I started, my committee and I feel we need to start working on public facing events for our members. I hope our members will support us and start attending them after a gap of over eighteen months if only to renew old friendships and obtain the full benefit of their membership of ICAEW. I hope to see you at one of these events soon.