Future of accountancy profession brought to life at ACCA virtual conference

Wednesday, 10 September 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Free online global conference explores the role finance professionals will play in building a stronger and sustainable global economy

Corporate culture, sustainability and global business service models are the burning issues up for discussion in the sixth annual Accounting for the Future global virtual conference, held by ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants). Four days of video and audio webcast content, on a range of subject matter involving the future of the accountancy profession, will be streamed live and on-demand for the conference on 15-18 September 2014. The themes of each day are:

Monday 15 September – Risk and culture: how much does corporate culture influence effective risk management and governance?
Tuesday 16 September – Investors and reporting: a new reporting framework.
Wednesday 17 September – Tomorrow’s world: how are changing economies going to impact on finance professionals?
Thursday 18 September – The smart finance function: how can finance teams work smarter to become the drivers of success with a business?

Key highlights to look out for during the four-day conference include an audio webcast on culture and channelling corporate behaviour. This session looks at recent scandals in the banking sector and hospitals where poor corporate culture has been blamed for the problems in these organisations. As a result of this, the Financial Stability Board expects risk culture to be thought about and boards of financial institutions will be asked to judge their own organisational culture. The event will also focus on natural capital and how companies are managing their impact and dependency on it, and how reporting influences the decisions of investors. On the last day of the conference an expert panel of senior finance leaders will discuss how they addressed the issues, challenges and opportunities of the change process in finance transformation, as more CFOs embrace shared services, outsourcing and other global business services models. Faye Chua, ACCA’s Head of Futures Research, said: “The finance profession is ever-changing, especially with the rapid advancement in technology we have seen in recent years. We need to keep up-to-date with the changes and see how beneficial they are to our work and to the profession as a whole. Of course everyone wants to be ahead of their competitors too, so this would be another incentive to keep up with change, as well as to build a stronger and sustainable economy. “The conference aims to create discussion and debate each year about topical issues for the finance profession. We organise these conferences every year to provide a platform for discussion and debate, as well as to be informative via experts in the finance field. This is also a way for ACCA members to get CPD points that count towards their training and education.” Register for the conference at http://www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/research-insights/af-journal/accounting-for-the-future.html.