Continuing professional development (CPD) is the requirement ACAs must comply with to help maintain a quality culture across the chartered accountancy profession. In November, ICAEW brings in changes to these requirements and with these come new benefits to compliance. For corporate financiers, the aim is to ensure that professional development is more relevant to current and future roles in this area.

The minimum time ICAEW members are expected to spend on CPD has been formalised and that requirement depends on the role. However, most members in corporate finance will need to complete 30 hours annually, two thirds of those being ‘verifiable’. The definition of verifiable CPD is pretty broad and encompasses seminars, courses and conferences, as well as consulting experts and carrying out technical research. It will also include reading the online version of Corporate Financier magazine.

At Deloitte, there’s an element of ‘carrot and stick’ in its approach to CPD, says Yvette Allen, who is a partner in transaction services within financial advisory and chair of the Corporate Finance Faculty technical committee. “The carrot is that there are fantastic courses and learning opportunities provided by the firm and the Corporate Finance Faculty, and our people’s annual objectives always include elements of professional development; they’re not solely about client projects. If people don’t do their verifiable CPD, then when it comes to appraisal time this will not be looked upon favourably, as they will not have met their objectives.”

Debbie Wheeler, Deloitte’s head of financial advisory learning, says keeping on top of new trends and standards in corporate finance provides “the support our people need to be really good at their job, not just technically, but to aid business development to help us sell to our clients”.

“It’s obviously essential to keep up to date with what’s going on in the financial environment,” adds Allen, “and CPD is the best way of doing that. The Institute has a fantastic range of resources. In particular, this includes Corporate Financier, which has excellent up-to-date information – recent examples being on ESG and AI – and is a regular and straightforward way of making sure you are up to date with the latest developments.”

The online edition of Corporate Financier will have a utility for logging time spent reading the magazine, which can be automatically confirmed as verified hours for CPD. Allen sees this as a particularly useful verifiable development resource for senior practitioners who’ve completed all the longer structured courses and training. She feels that colleagues engaging with the magazine will be a “win-win in terms of professional development while being an easy way to comply and get people into good habits of regular engagement”.

For Philip Olagunju, a partner at PEM Corporate Finance, “continuous lifelong learning is about maintenance of trust. I’m all for it because it just shows that we’re continually learning, developing and staying aware of regulatory and industry change.”

The changes mean Olagunju will need to “put a little more thought into what I’m doing rather than having the end-of-year scramble” to fulfil the hours. “Such planning is baked into the behavioural approaches of the wider accountancy practice. Having a regular, disciplined approach to capturing your CPD time will become natural, much in the same way as carving out time to read an article or to go on LinkedIn.” In other words, managing structures and logging time should be second nature to ICAEW members.

Amrit Mahbubani, a director within corporate advisory in the investment banking division at Panmure Gordon, is putting time in his diary every fortnight on a Friday to either log or embark on CPD “so that come the year’s end, it’s a two-minute ‘download and submit’ rather than thinking, ‘Oh no, I have to do 30 hours next week’”.

Mahbubani adds: “When you look at the new requirements, most people in my position would see that we meet them anyway, by virtue of training and industry or regulatory updates as part of the day job. It’s just a matter of tracking them and creating an audit trail.” With a plethora of CPD-approved courses – as well as reading Corporate Financier – automatically logged, this portion of the CPD will be simple to track. “Naturally,” he says, “just being in the job means you’re not resting on your laurels. You develop your skills and knowledge with time and keeping abreast of whatever’s new – and there are always nuances and lessons learned in any 12-month period.”

Deloitte’s Wheeler also sees “a huge push to incorporate various schemes, making sure people engage with learning. Whether we needed the CPD commitment or not, there are so many projects going on, with thousands of resources that can support them. But everyone across our different units has different needs, so it’s about making sure the curricula tie in with what people need for their roles.”