In the post here on Friday about the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales's use of the £148 million of funding that they have received since 2015 from fines and cost recoveries paid to them by member firms that have failed in their public duty to undertake work to an acceptable standard I noted that the ICAEW said when explaining how they might use these funds:
For example, we are examining how we can future-proof our training and qualifications, to ensure that the next generation of chartered accountants has the skills and expertise required by the workplace and wider economy of the future.
I thought I would look for some evidence of what the ICAEW thinks is needed.
Because the ICAEW has just significantly upgraded the amount of time a chartered accountant must spend training each year, it has itself become a major player in supplying continuing professional development courses, which it promotes to its members (like me) as often as it can:
I followed that link to this site:
There I looked at the programme for March (there isn't apparently, one for February) and May (because again, it seems training is pretty unpopular in April) and found these:
As is apparent, not a lot of this is about soft skills.
None are about ethics. There is, instead, a deeply patronising one-hour course on ethics all chartered accountants must take each year.
Most courses are deeply technical, which is not where almost any of the errors that have given rise to fines have been.
Nothing is about meeting client expectations or the needs of stakeholders in society.
Sustainability gets one course in the year. That's how important it apparently is despite the ICAEW saying that meeting the sustainable development goals in this area is core to its strategy and has implied this is a reason for keeping those millions.
And the reasonable professional angst that any good partner should suffer from - which is why are we doing what we are doing for the people we are trying to serve and how might we do it better? - is entirely ignored, as far as I can see.
But my real question is, how is it going to cost £148 million to support this programme, which is the only evidence of training programmes provided by the ICAEW that there is because they do not themselves provide training for their professional exams, but only mark them?
Maybe they'd like to respond because I can see nothing here but a rather small training operation that could function with very little capital at all since payment for most courses will be taken upfront and they are done online.
So, where is that £148 million going?
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In round numbers £148 million since 2015 seems to be around £16 million a year.
Membership of the ICAEW excluding students seems to be around 181,000.
So that’s around £88 per member per year equivalent to spend on improving the ethics and training of the membership.
For an organisation where the average income seems to be 500 times that, this doesn’t seem like a vast pot of money.
But it’s a good question, where is it going? Is it sitting in a bank or government bonds until someone can decide perhaps.
None of it has been spent, at all
It is still on the balance sheet at end 2022
Money is a resource but some feel that it should just be collected. The fact that they’ve soaked up that cash and left others with less is never considered.
It’s the same with guitars.
A 1959 vintage Les Paul or a 1962 Fender Stratocaster was built and sold to be used and heard. Yet so many end up in glass cases as an investment.
In both cases, its a total misapplication of the original concept.
I’d do the same though. Gimme an early LP and I’d prize it, but not play it. Pointless when there are so many amazing replicas out there.
Bill
You’d prize it and play it wouldn’t you? At least at home or in the studio. Gigging and touring with it would be the riskiest thing to do with ’59 Gibson Les Paul. And I think they’re over rated anyway – the ’62 Gibson Les Paul would be my preference.
And for me, it would be 1952 Fender Telecaster over any of them.
Feathering their own nest and those of their rich clients comes to mind.
Some part of ICAEW supports your arguement for improving soft skills across the profession.
https://www.icaew.com/insights/viewpoints-on-the-news/2023/feb-2023/skills-and-traits-the-accountancy-profession-needs-most
Institutes across other professions, with more ambition than money or resources, will be looking on in disbelief They would be investing any windfall in the development of thier profession and services the thier members. Might there be a cultural issue here? ‘Sitting in the money’. Caution over vision? Taking a very commercial attitude in seeking to substantially increase the annual renewable income generated by every member?