Presentation by Roger Tabor, PAODC/PAIB Committee/CICPA Joint Session, Beijing, China, October 15, 2013

1. Professional Accountants in
Business Committee
supporting PAO Development
Roger Tabor
PAODC / PAIB Committee / CICPA
Joint Session
Beijing, China
15 October, 2013
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2. IFAC
IFAC’s Focus
• Professional accountants in business integrated into
IFAC’s vision
“The global accountancy profession will be recognized
as a valued leader in the development of strong and
sustainable organizations, financial markets, and
economies.”
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3. IFAC
Professional Accountants in Business Objectives
• Increase awareness of important role professional
accountants play in creating, enabling, preserving and
reporting value for organizations and their stakeholders
• Supporting member organizations in enhancing the
competence of their members through development and
sharing of good practices and ideas.
PAIB objectives directly support capacity building
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4. PAIBs matter to the way economies perform
• Economic and business failures aren’t just down to weak
reporting and regulation
• Financial reporting and audit address what’s happened:
managerial accountancy influences what’s going to
happen in future
• Real performance is created inside organizations
This applies in the public sector too
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5. Causes of Business Failure – Many PAIB related
• Dysfunctional governance and management
• Ethics, culture, poor tone at the top
• Strategic
• Poor decisions
• Poor execution
• Inadequate responses to uncertainty through
ineffective risk management and internal control
• Flying blind with poor financial management and
accounting
• Operational inefficiency
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6. Key Features of PAIBs’ Contribution
• Creating value—developing strategies for sustainable
value creation;
• Enabling value—supporting the governing body and
management in making decisions and facilitating the
understanding of performance;
• Preserving value—asset and liability management,
managing risk in relation to setting and achieving the
organization’s objectives, and implementing and
monitoring effective internal control systems; and
• Reporting value—ensuring relevant and useful internal and
external business reporting
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7. Key Features of PAIBs’ Contribution
• Ensuring the
organization is doing the
right things in the right
way
• Influencing the future
• Providing accountability
• Dealing with uncertainty
and ambiguity
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8. Finance Leadership (CFO, FD, controller etc)
• PAIBs in finance leadership roles are a critical part of
ensuring well-governed and managed organizations
• Finance leadership and professionalism apply to
stewardship and business partnership
• The reality is that the number of PAIBs in senior finance
and accounting roles is declining in many jurisdictions
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9. The Practical Challenge
• PAIBs widely scattered
• Small groups and isolated individuals as well as large
departments
• Broad range of expertise (with specialization in big
organizations)
• Many sources of information available from outside
accountancy profession
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10. IFAC
Recommendations for PAOs and Employers
• Understand and meet organizational needs
• Ensure the scope of qualification and training incorporates
broader professional and managerial capabilities and skills
• Foster and encourage a commitment to lifelong learning
• Be creative and innovative in how support members
• Flexible education approaches that deal with
– Cultural and geographical differences
– Offering broad business experience
– Flexible approaches to development and training
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11. Focus of the Profession Needs to Adapt
• Current focus mainly on creating standards and rules for
governing how organizations are held accountable to
providers of resources to the entity (investors, taxpayers
etc)
• A critical aspect of capacity building is to help PAOs to
proactively engage with PAIBs, and their employers
• PAIBs also need to derive value from their professional
membership
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12. Equipping the Profession
• Targeted governance and support
structures are needed to more
effectively engage with, and
represent PAIBs
• Need for more support and
encouragement for PAOs to
create, improve, and foster PAIB
networks and support
• Ensuring that PAOs and
employers support relevant
knowledge acquisition
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13. Direct Contribution of the PAIB Committee
• Support the PAODC goal on developing capacity of the
profession to support financial stability, sustainable
growth, and social progress, by
– Engaging and bringing together PAOs to share knowledge and
experiences in serving PAIBs (e.g., Yacoob Suttar presentation to PAIB
Committee http://www.ifac.org/news-events/2013-03/professionalaccountants-business-committee-institute-chartered-accountants-paki)
– Representation and guidance in good governance, risk management &
internal control, financial and performance management and business
reporting (among other areas)
– Outreach to non-accountants who do same work as PAIBs (e.g.,
controllers)
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14. Moving Forward: Strategic Imperatives
• Enhance outreach to non-MBs with PAIB equivalents, and
facilitate creation/expansion of PAIB activities within MBs
• Effectively engage with current IFAC members to develop
their support and engagement of PAIBs
• Greater recognition and prominence of professional
accountants’ support for economies through ‘successful
sustainable organizational performance
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