The ACCA qualification
KOTA KINABALU: The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) exams have been the bane of existence for many accounting students worldwide and with good reason as their exams are notorious for being difficult.
Despite its tough reputation, the global professional accounting body continues being a highly sought-after qualification that many professionals strive to obtain as it is not only a badge of honour that represents their capabilities to prospective employers but also a pathway for them to obtain and hone necessary skills that will help them thrive in the professional workplace.
In recent years it has become clear that the qualification is not just for accountants anymore as it is now more common to see other professions outside of the usual accountancy, banking and finance fields taking up the ACCA qualification – showcasing its increasing relevancy in our society.
That said, many of us are still new to the whole process of obtaining an ACCA qualification, its prequalifications and its benefits to our respective professions or ca- reer paths.
To answer some of these questions, The Borneo Post sat down with ACCA Malaysia country head Edward Ling in an exclusive interview to discuss the globally recognised qualification, its pathways and how examinees can be successful at it. Q: Why are other professions pursuing an ACCA qualification?
A: The ACCA is not just for those who are in banking, finance or accounting. In fact, many of our members are not even practicing professional accountants and come from a variety of backgrounds like law and business.
A lot of lawyers are studying for the ACCA and this is due to the scope of their work evolving towards more areas in finance. Because of this, they find it extremely useful to have both knowledge about the law and financial knowledge.
Many chief executive officers (CEOs), business owners and entrepreneurs have also sought after an ACCA qualification and it makes a lot of sense as it is extremely practical for them to have sound financial knowledge as they will be in charge of running entire businesses and managing its financial matters.
In the future, as we advance and job scopes widen, it will also be highly probable that other industries like the fast-paced IT industry will find the ACCA and other financial studies or qualifications to be useful or necessary. Q: What other benefits does the ACCA provide apart from financial knowledge? A: The ACCA is a very practical qualification to have because we are continuously update its content to ensure that it remains relevant in the modern world. Every five to seven years, we will have a big change based on extensive research on what skills and knowledge our graduates, their employers and their industries need and are looking for.
Recently, we came up with the ‘seven quotients of success’ model that showcases the skills and qualities that are essential to the evolving accountancy profession.
We developed this model from feedback from 8,000 employers globally and found that skills and qualities such as technical and ethical skills, intelligence, creativity, digital skills, emotional intelligence, vision and experience were found to be vital to succeed as a professional accountant.
We also have a continual learning requirement where our ACCA members are required to fulfill 40 units or hours of continual professional development (CPD) each year. We provide various resources of CPD to ensure our members are able to maintain and develop skills that they can apply in the workplace.
Personally, I think having an ACCA qualification is a good weapon for anyone. When you have an , I cannot guarantee that you will have a good life because ultimately, you will have to rely on yourself and your decisions.
But with an ACCA, I can guarantee that it will give you a badge of honour to showcase your capabilities, to help you gain respect from your cohorts and provide you with skills and knowledge that will be useful in gaining success in your future careers.
It gives you a very good base to start with but the end result will still be dependent on your actions from that day onwards. Q: Am I eligible to take the ACCA? How long will it take?
A: As long as you have an interest and you meet the minimum entry requirements in your STPM, then you can come in and study for the ACCA. Usually it will take three years if everything goes well.
Right now, studying the ACCA is much cheaper compared with studying for an accounting degree first. If you are someone who has finished their STPM exam and is very certain that you would like to become a professional accountant, then the best path for you would be to study for our Certified Accounting Technician (CAT) qualification and then go on to studying for the ACCA qualification.
If you go for the usual route of getting a degree first then doing the ACCA, it will take you an extra four years to complete your pathway. It makes much more sense for you to go for the ACCA straight away if you are already sure of your future as a professional accountant.
If you’d still like to obtain a degree, there is always the option of getting your masters after the ACCA or obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Applied Accounting from the Oxford Brookes University in UK. This is a specialised degree that is available exclusively only to ACCA students who wish to obtain a degree while they are studying towards the ACCA qualification.
For students with careers and degrees, we will review your respective degrees to see if you are eligible for any exemptions in the ACCA exams. Degrees with some accountancy in their syllabuses such as finance or commerce may see exemptions of three to five exams but degrees in the sciences or engineering may likely see zero exemptions.
In total there are 13 exams all together in the ACCA and provided that everything goes well, students can expect to finish the exams and obtain their qualification in three years. Q: Is it possible to self-study for the ACCA?
A: As passing the ACCA exams may not be the easiest, we do encourage students to join our tuition providers for face-to-face lessons whenever possible but we understand the limitations of this.
We can’t force everyone to go to class as they have their own personal commitments that might prevent them from doing so but this in turn poses a lot of challenges for them as they might sign up for an exam without knowing exactly what kind of preparations they really need.
With about half of our 32,000 students in Malaysia doing self-study, we have started doing roadshows to show these students what kind of support that we have available for them.
For example, study plans, intensive review classes, study materials available, peer to peer platforms that you can learn from, mock exam papers, and progress test papers. Not only are these accessible for students to help make sure that they have sufficient support to succeed in their studies, but also all our learning providers have a type of self-guided module for students who wish to self-study.
Our approved learning providers are carefully monitored and managed by the ACCA and are ranked silver, gold or platinum. Silver are new partners, gold are partners who have 50 per cent of papers they are offering surpassing the global pass rates and platinum are partners who have 75 per cent of papers surpassing the global pass rates.
If they are unable to maintain their pass rates for more than two quarters, they will be downgraded. We want to make sure that our students are really guided in proper way for our exams. Q: Is studing abroad better?
A: I do not recommend this because locally, we have a lot of good institutions that can prepare you for the ACCA exams.
As a testament to their effectiveness in bringing out the excellence in our students, every year we have at least one student that will end up having the honour of being one of the top three students in the world.
The best students are not necessarily all from the UK, they can come out from other countries as well, and Malaysia is one that regularly produces some of the best.
For June 2017, Malaysian student Lee Jye Yong snagged the bronze medal affiliate award as she ended up scoring the third highest marks overall in the world for ACCA examinations. While earlier this year in February, 21-year-old student Wan Nur Mafudah from Terrengganu made headlines as she was awarded the world prize winner for the ACCA Financial Reporting paper. Q: Do you have any advice for prospective or current ACCA students?
A: My advice for students is that they should be more resilient and not give up easily. Nowadays many students will end up giving up or changing course in their lives whenever they encounter hardships. It is very important for you to be determined to achieve to what you want to achieve.
By doing ACCA this is exactly the kind of spirit you must have in order to be able to conquer all the papers.
I would advise students to be more open minded and not confine yourself to only one thing or thought at a time.
There are so many possibilities that you can try and work on. If you think that an ACCA will only allow you to become an accountant then you will only become an accountant.
But if you believe you can do a lot of things with an ACCA qualification then you can do a lot of things. People have told me they do not want to study ACCA because they want to be innovative and become an entrepreneur but they don’t realise that ACCA is exactly what they should be doing as it provides them with a rounded skill set.
It doesn’t just teach them accounting but develops them into future business leaders by developing their strategic business skills, providing them with real life scenarios and situations.
Finally, I would advise students to remember that they should embody the trait of humility in order to remain successful throughout life.
Arrogance will not bring about long-term success and if you succeed in becoming an ACCA member you’ll realise that we encourage and even make it mandatory for all our members to continuously improve on their knowledge and skills.