New ACCA Program: A Criticism from Canada

Disclosure: I am a designated CPA. I am not a legacy CA.

Context

God save industry accountants all across Canada!

Unfortunately, CPA Canada is planning to eliminate industry experience verification in 2027.

By the time students are truly ready to enter the new CPA program, not just meeting the academic prerequisites, they may or may not have good enough grades to be considered for a pre-approved training program by a CPA-aligned employer.

If they don’t have luck with securing employment in a pre-approved training program and choose to stay in industry, then they might as well pursue ACCA at that point.

ACCA already has over 5,000 members and 2,000 students in Canada.

Old world: CA, CGA, and CMA

Current world: CPA, CPA, and CPA

Possible future world: CPA, ACCA, and CFA

ACCA Changes

That is the context of why ACCA should strive to become the next Canadian accounting designation.

If ICAEW and ACCA merged, but Big Four influences moved to get rid of industry experience, how would qualified ACCA members feel about this?

However, ACCA has released changes to its own syllabus which is encouraging an increase upon increase of Affiliates.

ACCA should have gone back to 14 or 15 papers.

4 + 5 + 3 + 2 or 3

But spread them over 4 levels instead of 3.

The current Strategic Professional Level should be split into two: 3 + 2 or 3.

The 3 after the 5 should bring back the Governance, Risk, and Ethics (GRE) exam.

Increased Exemptions

In the Canadian context, ACCA should be issuing more and more exemptions, not less.

A Reddit discussion on an ACCA in the UK itself who struggled to do accounting for non-profits demonstrates ACCA’s weakness in non-profit accounting.

IFRS does not cover non-profit accounting, not even the basic contrast between the deferral method and the restricted method of fund accounting. Local accounting standards do.

This Canadian CPA would not recommend any industry accountant in Canada to take the Financial Reporting exam through ACCA directly.

GRE, Strategic Business Reporting (SBR), and Strategic Business Leader (SBL) should be a separate level, should be made a bit easier, and should be subject to All But One exam exemptions.

The difficulty of SBR, for example, could be lowered to match the Diploma in International Financial Reporting (DipIFR) exam paper.

ICAEW / ICAS students would be exempt from SBR and GRE but not SBL.

CIMA students would be exempt from GRE and SBL but not SBR.

CPA Canada students would be exempt from GRE and SBL but not SBR. No CPA program student or any of the older CA program students, CGA program students, or CMA program students have been exposed to the Group Question common to ICAEW, ICAS, and ACCA.

Elective Level

The reduction of the required number of electives to take from two to one is most disturbing. It is this which is encouraging an increase upon increase of Affiliates.

If anything else, ACCA should have made the required number of electives into three. Furthermore, students should have been required to take the Advanced Audit and Assurance (AAA) exam paper or the Advanced Performance Management (APM) exam paper as one of the electives.

More Additional Electives

The new elective on data science is long overdue. One of the former accounting bodies in Canada had a database-centric management information systems elective with lower pass rates.

However, ACCA should have introduced at least two more elective exam papers.

The ICAEW has two on banking and insurance. The banking one is neat, and it dovetails into Chartered Banker material quite nicely.

One of the former accounting bodies in Canada had a few more electives, including public sector and internal audit.

CPA Canada itself had an aborted attempt at an accounting technician program with non-profit accounting as an elective.