Accountants in short supply in SA
• Saica’s strategy aims to ensure a sustainable pipeline of students
Results from the recently announced 2016 South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) examinations mean that more than 2,000 new chartered accountants [CAs(SA)] are soon due to join the profession.
However, demand for CAs(SA) in SA is high and what is produced falls short of the private and public sector’s needs. The upside is it means there is a market for more CAs(SA) and is a key driver in Saica’s strategy to ensure a growing and sustainable student pipeline, a matter Saica has been heavily invested in over the past 12 years through its Thuthuka programme.
Karin Iten, project manager: marketing at Saica, says: “There is a huge shortage of CAs(SA) in SA, a trend which is observed globally, but felt more keenly in developing countries. It is a profession the Department of Labour has identified as being in short supply.
“Furthermore, our research shows that CAs(SA) are one of the top 10 positions companies have difficulty filling because of this shortage. There are just not enough new CAs(SA) coming into the market to meet demand,” Iten says.
Added to this is that fact that there are a limited number of pupils who are eligible to study to become a CA(SA) as they need high marks in core subjects such as mathematics. Unfortunately, all too few pupils opt to take mathematics, choosing the perceived easier math literacy route.
Also, the accounting profession has to compete within this relatively small pool of suitable candidates (students who take mathematics) with all the other professions, ranging from actuaries and engineers to doctors and physicists.
Nwabisa Tsengiwe, senior executive: marketing, communications and PR at Saica, says the institute’s approach to the challenge is to, in the words of their CEO, “grow our own timber”.
“In light of SA’s shortage of good mathematics pupils, we have initiatives under our Thuthuka (Zulu for ‘to develop’) Education Upliftment Fund where we do career awareness, starting at high school level, around the importance of mathematics and also educate people as to what the CA(SA) profession entails.
“We visit schools to speak to students and teachers. We also want to make sure teachers are equipped properly so that they are able to teach mathematics, and that they are able to communicate the importance of choosing the correct subjects to their students,” Tsengiwe says.
Saica also has a programme, the Thuthuka Bursary Fund (TBF), through which it provides funding and support to financially disadvantaged African and Coloured students who want to become CAs(SA).
“We have to deal with the challenge of making maths, as well as science and accounting subjects, attractive. We then face the hurdle of some of those students being unable to afford the cost of a university education for four years.”
So to address this, she explains, “we work hard not only to make the profession as attractive as possible, but we also facilitate pupils, who have met the requirements, access to funds through the TBF and thus ensure we have our own pipeline of people we can bring into the profession”.
Iten says South African CAs(SA) are in demand around the world. “For the seventh consecutive year we were internationally recognised as being the best country in the world for governance and auditing standards. This is why people want South African CAs. At the end of the training process, our measure is competence. We do not want people who just know what they are doing in theory; we want professionals who understand what they are doing and who can apply themselves in different situations,” Iten says.
WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE CHALLENGE OF MAKING MATHEMATICS ATTRACTIVE