Host
- Philippa Lamb
Guests
- Mike Miller, Economic Crime Manager, ICAEW
- Anne Allibone, fractional CFO and commercial advisor
- Shaun Robertson, Director, Education and Qualifications, ICAEW
Producer
- Natalie Chisholm
Transcript
Philippa Lamb: Hello, welcome to Accountancy Insights. Today, we’ll be talking to Mike Miller, ICAEW’s Economic Crime Manager, about the latest updates to Companies House legislation; Anne Allibone, fractional CFO and director of Allibone Consulting, will join us to discuss common pitfalls when start-ups try to scale up; and Shaun Robertson, ICAEW Director of Education and Qualifications, will be covering the new ACA – why is it changing, and what’s new?
First, Companies House. Now in July, the government introduced four Statutory Instruments to Parliament to enforce a number of provisions in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. Mike, can you just remind us what the overarching plan was here?
Mike Miller: This really centres on the abuse of Companies House, which has been a long-held known: everybody knows you can register a company in Companies House with minimal checks and minimal funds. So these are really changes that have been in the background for a long time. They’re now coming to the fore, and they’re being implemented. Essentially the reason is, there are a huge amount of fraudulent companies, and essentially companies that don’t exist, registered on Companies House, which can obviously enable people to do a huge amount of activities, having a company that isn’t actually one, if it’s registered.
PL: Geopolitics is bringing this into sharp focus right now. On the details, should we look at authorised corporate service providers first?
MM: Authorised corporate service providers is an interesting side of what’s going on with this. It essentially allows professional services firms, including those who are ICAEW members, to register as an ACSP, as we’ll call them from now on, which allows them to verify the identity of people who will, under these regulations, need to be identified from next year moving on.
PL: So it really broadens the pool.
MM: It does. So there is an issue that everybody who files accounts will need to be an ACSP in the future, so they will all need to be verified, which crosses over into the corporate reporting side – and the fact that that has been delayed, which I think is a bit disappointing but understandable in the current climate, from our point of view. From my point of view, as somebody who looks at economic crime, an ACSP needs to deliver a standard of verification, that is to the legal definition of verification. We’ve had the same problem with the Register of Overseas Entities, which is also part of Companies House, as you will know. And to be an ACSP now one must be registered for anti-money laundering requirements. We are obviously the largest accountancy supervisor of anti-money laundering in the UK. But the difference between the anti-money laundering regime – which necessitates a risk-based approach to dealing with problems, and the verification – which requires to look through everything to make sure somebody is exactly who they say they are – is different. So we are, from an AML perspective, slightly concerned that if people think, OK, if I adhere to the AML risk-based approach regulation, then I will automatically be covered for doing verification for a client, which is not true.
PL: That brings us to director information identity verification too. How’s that going to work?
MM: All directors will have to verify their identity. This extends even to LLPs. Now, in reality, from my point of view, I think this is a good shift, but there are a lot of requirements that previously weren’t part of the package of setting up a company and doing the work behind the scenes that probably there should have been. So we’ve produced a lot of documents on this, a lot of guidance to go through for people who need to complete the process.
PL: What sort of things are we talking about, Mike? I appreciate there’s a lot, but are there any that particularly stand out for you?
MM: Everybody needs to prove they’re a person, essentially – which you would think would be a normal, a normal requirement, but hasn’t previously been so. So if you have a valid passport, or you have a valid driving licence, you have a valid form of ID, then you can move on with it, and this will be fine. You can register for this directly with Companies House, or you can do it with an ACSP, as we discussed beforehand. The requirements aren’t onerous. The processing of the information may be slightly more difficult at the Companies House side, which is why we’ve encouraged, for many years, that Companies House has greater investment in order to go through the myriad of data that it has, which is gigantic, and only getting bigger. People will need to register; overseas companies will now need to register; LLPs will need to register. So yeah, it’s going to be a big task.
PL: Yes, LLPs – should we talk a bit more about that?
MM: It’s a change [for] LLPs. One of the statutory instruments essentially abolishes the need for LLPs themselves to keep a list of their directors or their members, and they have to be centrally registered in Companies House. So the point of this SI, essentially, is to bring them into line with other companies and say, OK, you need to be registered as a person of significant control or a director if you’re going to be one of the leading people in an LLP. Previously, that hasn’t happened. Now it’s supposed to. So we’ll see.
PL: So who might be a person or persons of significant control, Mike?
MM: A person of significant control – so there’s a lot of ways to look at it. The legal definition, in short, would be somebody who owns or controls more than 25% of the company. Generally you’re looking at a board member, a director, a large shareholder. There are nuances to this, of course, because it’s one of the mechanisms that people can use to exert influence over a company without necessarily being cleanly registered on the sheets. This is trying to bring persons of significant control into Companies House, which a lot of times hasn’t happened because another one of the SIs, the four SIs that were laid just before the recess in parliament, states essentially that where these used to be locally registered, they now need to be registered with Companies House.
PL: So there’s a lot going on, isn’t there? What is the likely timeline for these changes? Do we know?
MM: So it’s been active for a few months now. From November 18, it will be mandatory, and these SIs have still not been signed off in parliament, so obviously parliament has only returned this week, so they have time to do it. But these should be signed off – they’re pretty uncontentious. There are other changes that will be due in 2026 and probably into 2027. It’s not really my area of expertise to talk about the small company filing requirements, which have been delayed, but that will be something that needs to be addressed by the government as we go forward.
PL: So it’s all happening right now. For accountants and the businesses, what should they be doing right now to prepare for this?
MM: Those accountants that are submitting accounts, they’re filing accounts, should be putting themselves in a position to register themselves as ACSPs – authorised corporate service providers – because they are very likely going to need to have that requirement in order to move forward and file accounts for their clients. For firms – I speak mainly for smaller firms here, because we have a lot of regulations coming in at the same time, we have failure to prevent fraud, which has come in at the beginning of September, which we could probably do a whole hour podcast on – but there are a lot of requirements. And for those who are setting up their businesses in order to do this, I urge the same caution, as I said when we put up the Register of Overseas Entities entry into this, that you must have a clear understanding of the people that you’re dealing with, and the level of scrutiny that is expected is much higher than it would be for dealing with a normal client or a normal person, or dealing under the AML regulations which we’ve discussed. It’s not simply a case of ‘this is a money-maker to set up a firm and start verifying directors’. There is a pretty high bar when it comes to verification, and if you verify somebody that doesn’t do essentially what they say they’re going to do, then you’re going to have some legal liability. And obviously this is particularly difficult with overseas clients, because who has the expertise to verify overseas passports, etc?
PL: Lots of resources on the website?
MM: Lots of resources on the website. We’ll be doing more as it progresses. We’ll be doing webinars. We’ll be producing guidance. We’ll be producing what you need to look at before you do it, especially around ACSP registration, which is going to be the next big thing.
PL: Thank you very much, Mike.
MM: Thank you so much.
PL: Now on to scaling up your business, and Anne Allibone is with us again. Thanks for coming back in, Anne.
Anne Allibone: Great to be here.
PL: Obviously this is a big subject we’re tackling in chunks on the podcast, but today we’re going to look at common mistakes. In your experience, how prepared are most start-ups when they enter into this process?
AA: Well, I think it really varies, which you’re going to be surprised to hear. I think there’s a number of factors that really make a difference. One would be speed of growth, so how quickly they’ve scaled up. One will be the type of business. So some types of businesses are already more automated in their processes, and therefore it’s easier. But I think probably, for me, the biggest difference is really about just the experience of the founders and the management team. So if they’ve done it before, you’ll know that there’ll be a lot of investors that will often be interested in people that have exited before and have been there and done it. Because a lot of the time, the founders and their experience will really make a big difference to how prepared they are and able to go through that process. I think the only other thing really would be also the input that they’ve had from advisers, so having the right advice at the right stages. So even if they haven’t been through that before, they have sought out the right advice from the right people.
PL: OK, so they’re good to go. But common stumbling blocks – there must be a few?
AA: Yeah, well, I think probably around that last point is just getting that advice early. It’s a lot easier to make changes when you’re smaller. I did have one client I went into, and we had quite a lot of process change we had to make, and they were already at 450 clients, so that was quite a lot of work to be able to fix that. So that took about six months, whereas, actually if you take the time to set it up from the start, then you know that it’s going to be fine as you scale. So I think really about getting that advice early hugely helps. And I think probably one of the biggest mistakes I see is – even when people have spent the time to put the processes in, and they’ve planned the processes, and they know what they need to do – is not adding that controls layer. So when you actually have the processes, you’re maybe capturing the right data, but if you’re not managing that data and making sure it’s correct and making sure people are following those processes, then it becomes still very difficult to use that data. So really, having that controls layer is very important. And again, just thinking about the scale at the outset. So think about what processes you need for your business at the next two stages, not just now.
PL: Yeah, I mean that’s it – scaling up – the clue’s in the name, isn’t it? Delegation must be a thing that’s quite fresh for some small companies, and then suddenly they’re going to have to do a lot more of it?
AA: Absolutely. And I think this is a real challenge for founders, especially the ones who have maybe bootstrapped a lot really early on, and they’ve really had all the hats on, and been across everything. They can also find it, you know, it’s very personal. You know, it’s their business. They’ve been involved in everything. And it’d be quite hard to actually then start delegating. But it’s, it’s really important as the business grows, that they can free up their time to focus on other things. And that’s why you’re hiring – you’re hiring good people to take that off, so you’ve got to make sure that you’re actually allowing them to take on those roles.
PL: Do you find that they find that transition quite challenging, letting go of things or actually understanding there are chunks now that actually aren’t their area of expertise, and they just have to hand it over to other people?
AA: Absolutely. And I think, like with anything, I mean, even with school driven now, it’s really important that people are given the ability to make mistakes, and that that’s OK. So I think as founders, you’ve got to hire people and set them up for success, train them, give them the support that they need, but also allow mistakes to be made, and then it’s how you tackle those – to say, actually, how do we learn from that? What potential learning and development do we need to put in place?
PL: Yeah, because that’s an issue, isn’t it? Because if it’s not your area, you’re really not going to be the ideal person to think about the learning development for the person you’ve now brought in. So that’s a whole other piece, isn’t it?
AA: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is where actually, for smaller businesses, the fractional piece and the adviser piece comes in – you know, it’s a huge support for them. It’s not just about knowing what good looks like. It’s also about them being able to support their staff and their training and give them that input in order to be able to do that. And I think if you don’t have people to go to – and it doesn’t necessarily need to be fractional, it might be people you’ve got on your board, it might be advisers, it might be people within your organisation already – but really making sure that you’re covering off everything. So founders do need to be very self-aware in terms of what their skill sets are and where there are gaps.
PL: This is all about communication, isn’t it, because that must surely spring from a really clear understanding of what the mission is – which you’d think would be, you know, your starting point. But I’m guessing it isn’t always?
AA: I think, you know, again, businesses are able to evolve their mission and their values and, you know, what they’re trying to achieve. The really important thing is that everyone in your company understands what that is. So again, as you scale and as you grow and your teams are bigger, the founders – or, you know, the people running the business – need to make sure that there’s downward communication. So if you want to be able to achieve your goals as a business, then everybody needs to know what you’re trying to achieve. And if they don’t know what they’re trying to achieve, then it’s hard for you to expect them to help you get there
PL: And have this shared vision. This is all about more management time – more people management time – than perhaps some founders have really been used to putting into their businesses?
AA: I think it’s also about, you know, really setting up that routine of the communication as well. Because it’s very easy for everyone to be busy and to move forward. And you’ve got to really think about, how often do I need to be communicating this down? What’s the forum for me to do that? Because it’s very easy, as a founder when you know everything, to forget, so that other people don’t have sight of what you do and hear what you do. So making sure that you put in that actual structure to be able to do that.
PL: I mean, are there formulas you give to people for that? Where do you start with that?
AA: Again, with a lot of these things, it varies a lot company to company. I think you’ve got to be true to your own culture and what works for you. I have seen it work really well in one business in particular – they got the culture really right, and that was, they had weekly updates as a whole business, areal little snapshot. So it wasn’t a lot, but everyone felt like they knew what everyone else was doing. And that worked really well. There would have been about 60 people at the time.
PL: So that’s quite a big ask, isn’t it?
AA: Yeah, it does seem so, but I think, again, it was part of the routine, and it was made really easy. So each team just had to give a couple of minutes update, which was on their own team, and it was just everyone, everyone turns up. They don’t have to be in the office – you know, it could be online. And it was just made very easy. But everyone knew at that 15 minutes they would understand what everyone else is up to.
PL: What about new roles, critical hires? I mean, should you outsource that? How should that work?
AA: So again, as you scale, there’s certain things that you need to cover off. In terms of whether you use someone that’s outsourced, or whether that you hire that yourself, really depends to the volume of work that’s required. Once you get to a volume that you are needing either a part role or a full role, then it makes sense to potentially hire someone. That said, when you’re hiring, and it’s the first role, generally, they’re going to be more junior, so you still need to make sure, have they got the support above? Have you got the advisers in place, or someone they can go to, to help manage them. And if you do choose to outsource, which, again, is equally fine, it’s also remembering you might have outsourced that role, but you still need to manage it, and you still need to pass information. So just because you’ve put that task to someone else doesn’t mean that the output you’re going to get back is what you need, unless you manage the information. So you will need to still manage that process, even if it’s not done within your organisation.
PL: And you are – vitally – you’re going to need someone with solid financial knowledge, aren’t you, thoroughly on board, which you may not have had before.
AA: Absolutely, and I think again, with these things where the founder maybe doesn’t have that experience from before, they often don’t know what you need, or how to find it. And it’s only once they come up with a challenge or an issue – I’d say, most of the times that I get involved, it’s because they’re having to do a funding round, or they’re looking to do an exit, or maybe they’ve had a finance person leave and they don’t know where to start. Or, you know, there’s normally a trigger that means that they’re then seeking help, and often that is a number of steps after than when it probably would have been most convenient for them to actually get someone involved.
PL: Yeah. I mean, presumably, if they’ve got an outsourced accountant, they may fall into trouble thinking, yeah, we’ve got that covered off?
AA: Definitely. And I did have one client that definitely felt that. And when I spoke to them, initially, it sounded like they had all the processes in place. They had their outsourced accounting. But once I looked into the accounts, we did actually end up having to restate the whole lot, because it just hadn’t been managed, and the outsource accountants hadn’t really asked for the information that they needed to ensure that that data was correct, and the assumption of the founder was, I’ve outsourced that job.
PL: Yes, yeah, OK, which brings us to governance, doesn’t it? I mean, an absolutely crucial issue.
AA: Yes, definitely. And again, it’s about getting organised early and really understanding and putting these foundations in place when you’re small, before you make the mistakes. So even with, you know, governance size, there’s so many different things to think about. And you’ve got HR, you’ve got legal, you’ve got finance, you’ve got on your EMI things. There’s lots of deadlines and things you need to do that you might not be aware of. And if you miss some of those, it might be quite difficult to go back and rectify it. Certainly things like EMI returns at the moment, how you upload those – you can’t see even what you’ve uploaded, so you can’t go back and find out. So there’s a lot of things like that where you do need to think of it ahead of time. So I think it goes back to that early thing. Get advice early. Make sure, if it’s not something that you have the skill set for, that you’re getting input from someone, and that doesn’t need to be a lot – getting someone who’s really experienced in just for a short amount of time just to have a look and tell you what you need to do and what, I mean, you know where you’re potentially going wrong can make a really big difference,
PL: Because I can see how that might feel like overkill. If you’re a tiny start-up and you’re just starting to scale, and you come along, you say you’re gonna need this, that, this, all that – you think really, really, we need all that right now? But they do.
AA: I think not permanently, but I think you need advice from the right people. And actually, it doesn’t need to be a lot. What has changed, I would say, in the last 10 years is there’s so many more fractional people around, there’s a lot more advisers. So you can get that really good expertise in just a few hours or a couple of days without thinking, “I’ve got to hire a head of marketing,” I can go and find someone who’s really experienced to just give me advice and maybe support me in hiring someone and knowing who I should be hiring. So it’s just helping you make the right decision without making the mistakes first.
PL: That’s great. Thank you. There is more to say on this – we’ll definitely come back to it – but thanks very much indeed.
AA: No problem at all, thank you.
PL: And you know, as ever, if you want to dig more into this, there’s a lot of resources on the website. I think the best place to start is to search for ‘how to grow’, and you can go from there.
Finally, now, Shaun Robertson is here to tell us all about the new ACA qualification. Hello, Shaun, thanks for coming in.
Shaun Robertson: Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for inviting me here and to talk about the new ACA.
PL: Well, yeah, I guess the first question is, why is it being refreshed?
SR: It should come as no surprise that the ACA is a very dynamic qualification. It changes all the time. So anybody out there who qualifies at a certain point in time – that was unique to that point in time. It changes all the time, but every five years we zero base everything and go back to the drawing board, speak to all our stakeholders as wide and far as possible, to really find out what is the skill set you need to be a chartered accountant in 2025. And that helps us then try to see into the future a little bit, because we have got a duty of care for the students who are going through and training to be a chartered accountant. We should be providing them with a skill set that’s going to launch their career and future proof the skill set into the future and also be good for business as well.
PL: Yeah, because presumably it helps employers tailor their student’s learning better?
SR: Absolutely. Employers have a big hand in this about what they need from the students. Things change all the time. Technology definitely changes, but so does the political, economic environment we all work in. So we’ve got to make sure that you’re learning the right skill set that suits the current times, and ensure that that skill set matches the needs of the employer and the wider public need.
PL: And would it be fair to say that now the focus is more on skill set than rote learning?
SR: Absolutely. I mean, for a long time now, we have moved away from rote learning to how do you actually use the content and how you apply that knowledge to certain scenarios. In the new qualification we’re launching now, three of the exams are pure case studies, and all the other questions are scenario-based. So you’re not being asked what you’ve remembered. You’re being asked to apply your knowledge to a certain scenario and give advice, trying to synthesise what you do in the workplace, effectively.
PL: And this new approach, you mentioned that you go far and wide to get a sense of what you should be including, but it really is far and wide. It’s not just employers, but academics and tutors and all sorts?
SR: Absolutely. So we’ve got professional tutors, academics, definitely employers, regulators, our own internal experts. I try to go to other professions and other professional bodies and see what they’re doing. So doctors, dentists, lawyers, the whole gamut of professionals and also the students as well. Because it’s pointless, I think, teaching something to a student that are just going through the motions, they’ve got to be able to achieve this. And we’re very proud of the new qualification being achievable by the student as well. So what can they actually digest and use and not just go through an academic process?
PL: Yeah, and see the point of it as well.
SR: Absolutely. And see, actually, see the relevance and how it can fit into the workplace.
PL: It’s not just students, is it? Because accountants further into their careers – this is useful for them too, isn’t it? Because it gives them that vision of where the sector is now, and I presume it also plays into their CPD?
SR: Absolutely. I mean, one of the changes we’ve made to the new qualification is allowing the students to take control of learning as well and actually specialise it and hone it to their needs, of where they are in their training agreement. And that behaviour, building it in, it’ll build the behaviour towards when you’re qualified. And as you say, the more experienced accountants, because we’ve all got to think about what we need, what skills we need to actually hone in and beef up on; and therefore building that skill set, that behaviour, into early into the students, it’ll pay dividends in the future for the accountants as they go through their career.
PL: So thinking about what’s actually changing, it’s still structured over three levels?
SR: Yeah, yeah. So the three levels: certificate, professional and advanced.
PL: But the content, that has been considerably refreshed?
SR: The key, big thing we heard on the consultation was that the core skills of accounting have got to remain. You’ve got to be a good accountant, and especially with the technology that came through in the last few years – all the generative AI – a lot more of the routine tasks may be done by technology. And therefore you’ve got to be able to look at that and actually think, does that make sense? You’ve got to be able to judge the output. So the basics are key and fundamental. So that’s been strengthened in the qualification. But the hard, heavy, rote learning of standards and tax code, the students will get that in the exam now, and they’ve got to apply it to scenarios. So that’s the big change, it’s making sure there’s more application, case study environment.
PL: Specialised learning being a key part of it all?
SR: Absolutely. So every student will do the same core aspects. So we all know, as a chartered accountant, you can look to anybody – you all know the core training, and they’ve got good grounding in tax, audit risk. We all know the fundamentals across the board as well. So they’ve not specialised too early. But at the same time, they can take their core knowledge and then choose from a smorgasbord of different courses that will allow them to hone their skills and actually bend it to suit their particular client or environment they work in.
PL: So what sort of things?
SR: So for example, I mean, if you work in London, you’re thinking about the City. But if you’re outside London, you may be a bit more rural. So there’s farmers there; there’s the arts, that’s a big business in the UK as well. And internationally, a lot of companies have got businesses in the US, so you need to have a huge different type of skill set. So you can go into the specialised learning and look for what area you work in, and actually find this course, a small, bite-sized course that will help you focus or hone in on those key skills to suit your need.
PL: So how much of that will students do?
SR: Thirty units over their three-year training agreement – roughly 30 hours. I mean, we’re not saying definitely 30 hours. Some people might want to take longer to learn – I like to digest things properly; some people do it quickly. They’re 30 units. And it is not just about the absolute units. It’s about getting that behaviour installed in them as well, because once they qualify, they’ll have to do the CPD. But it makes students take that ownership and actually realise that they can go and learn something for learning’s sake, and not just towards an academic process to pass an exam,
PL: Yeah, not just a tick box. But there is still the 450 days of professional experience?
SR: Oh, absolutely. The core aspects when you’ve got the exams, body of knowledge, the experience - got to have experience, don’t trust any professional who hasn’t had a mentored experience. And also, there’s a whole professional development skill set that they’ve got to go through. And these professional development skills are wide, and they’re not just specific to accountants. It’s what you expect from professionals: communication – can you actually ask the correct question to get the correct information from your client? They might not know what the problem is. You better try and tease the problem out, listen, actually take all that heavy technical knowledge you’ve learned and communicate it in such a way they’re going to understand what you’re saying. So that huge range has been refreshed and updated as well,
PL: And there’s three core themes now – there’s sustainability, technology and ethics.
SR: Absolutely, yeah, those three areas at the moment, in 2025, are so important in the world. I mean, ethics –the finance world, people have got questionable trust in the finance world. So therefore, as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant, you’ve got to be so ethical. Everything that you do, you’ve got to think ethics. The ethics has got to be in your DNA. You’ve got to be seen to do the right thing, do the right thing, and make sure your clients are doing the right thing as well. There’s a dedicated exam as well, but it’s also prevailing throughout all through the qualification.
Sustainability [is a] massive issue at the moment.
PL: This is in its broadest sense?
SR: Absolutely; we do look at the recording and reporting and assuring of sustainability, but it’s wider than that. It’s looking at supply chains around the world, how you actually deal with your staff, your human capital, sustainable organisation, yeah, and look at the UN goals. It’s the wider aspect of sustainability, not just making sure that set of accounts looks green. We’re much wider than that.
And then finally, technology. There’s no way we can avoid technology now, so, but we’ve got to look at it in a very professional manner. And I use the words ‘harness technology’. Technology is there. It can be a good but it’s got to be used in an appropriate manner, so we don’t have some of the scandals that you see in the press of things going wrong and people being very hurt and losing livelihoods over it. So it’s got to be harnessed, and actually the risks thought about and actually mitigated as well. So technology will be throughout the qualification as well.
PL: So all completely contemporary themes. So how is all this being rolled out?
SR: It’s – yeah, you don’t want to be inside my head at the moment – it’s not complicated. It’s just, there’s a lot of moving parts, and they move very fast. So you’ve got the existing students doing the current ACA, and that’s fit for purpose. That has got technology, ethics, but this new one is having that brought further to the front, so they’ll go through a transitional set of arrangements. We’ve got a fair, pragmatic set of rules that move you from the old to the new qualification, so you’ll still qualify without any disruption. And I’ve been working a long time with employers, tutors, to ensure that’s as smooth as possible, and nothing to worry about. The students probably won’t even realise they’re going through a transition. They’ll just sit their exams and qualify, and they’ll just be as good as any other chartered accountant.
PL: Just to be clear, students who joined a training agreement from June this year, where are they in this?
SR: So from 1 July, if you register after 1 July, you’re deemed to be a next generation, new system. So you’re just purely the new system, 14 exams, specialised learning. If you’re already in your journey, you can transition across. And there’s pragmatic rules, all on our website, that show exactly what you’ve got to do to complete the qualification using the new framework.
PL: Because obviously there are two versions of the ACA running concurrently.
SR: Absolutely, yeah, they’re running until 2027, so there’s quite a long run, because we don’t want to hurt anybody, and it’s a duty of care to the student. It’s not the student’s fault, who joined last year – they didn’t know they were joining in a transitional year. So my duty of care is to ensure that they have a very smooth transition, and they’ll just do the same work as they signed up to do to qualify, so it’ll be fair, pragmatic and equality as well for everybody.
PL: And as you say, I mean, it’s a big transition, but you’ve done a huge amount of back end work on this, haven’t you, and I think you’ve mapped it all out, haven’t you, on the website, actually a visual of how it works?
SR: Absolutely, there’s lots of ready reckoners there. There’ll be a flow chart, like a train map: you can go through what have I done, and follow it through to work out what you’ve done. If any student is listening to this and they’re concerned, speak to the tutor or employer – or speak to ICAEW. If you do think you’ve got very awkward situation, I’d rather know now and fix it.
PL: OK, so maybe they should reach out directly?
SR: Absolutely. So, yeah, there’s nothing to worry about. There is a solution that will get you through. We want you to be a member, after all; we don’t want people stuck in academic perpetuity. So you definitely want to go to a membership.
PL: Yeah, this is about including people, not making it hard.
SR: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
PL: Thanks very much, Shaun, that’s great.
SR: You’re welcome, thank you.
PL: That is it for this episode. In the next Behind the Numbers, we’ll be looking at whistleblowers. How do we make it safer for people to highlight wrongdoing? Should we be incentivising them to do it. On our sister podcast, The Tax Track, Stephen Relf has been speaking to HMRC’s Director General, Customer Strategy and Tax Design, Jonathan Athow about the future of HMRC and what the changes will mean for accountants and tax advisers.
If you’ve been doing CPD, as you may know by now, by listening to this podcast, so make sure to log each episode @icaw.com whenever you listen. Thanks for being with us.