Compliance Webinars

Navigating the Compliance Network (Part 1)

This is the first of three one-hour presentations on compliance. It will help practitioners to understand the basics of compliance, and provide a helicopter view of accountancy regulation. Compliance with the law is only part of the picture, and the significant areas of statutory compliance will be the subject of a later presentation. (Even unqualified and unaffiliated accountants must comply with the Money Laundering Regulations and data protection legislation for example.) This particular presentation is more concerned with questions around an AIA Member’s right to call themselves an ‘International Accountant’ and the public’s right to know what that means. The presentation will address questions such as:

• Why should I comply with the AIA Bye-laws and Regulations?
• How can I navigate my way through the various compliance requirements?
• How does AIA help me to comply?

These questions may sometimes feel a little overwhelming, especially when concepts such as the ‘public interest’ get thrown into the mix. Inevitably, the subject of compliance is linked to the philosophical meanderings of what it means to be a ‘professional’ and the social contract we enter into when we join a professional body.

In reality, a busy accountant in practice will rarely welcome the news that they are to receive a monitoring visit from their professional body. However, that same accountant will (presumably) be proud to be a member of that body and be pleased that fellow members are subject to monitoring and held to high standards. This dichotomy of thought demonstrates the difference between the interests of a particular AIA Member and the interests of the collective AIA membership.

In the time available, this presentation cannot go into much detail about all the ethical and professional obligations on professional accountants in practice and how best to ensure effective compliance. However, it will provide delegates with a good understanding of where the various compliance requirements come from, the broad areas of regulation and compliance contained within AIA Regulations (and other parts of what is known as the AIA Constitution), and the help available to AIA Members in the form of guidance and other resources. (And don’t forget the importance of CPD in maintaining your compliance awareness.)

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Your Professional Obligations (Part 3)

This one-hour presentation (the last in the series) will focus on your professional obligations, by which we mean the regulatory requirements of your professional body. Those obligations come mostly from AIA’s Regulations, with which members and firms agree to comply when they apply for AIA membership. Failure to comply with the Regulations (which carry the same weight as the AIA Bye-laws) may give rise to liability to disciplinary action. 

The relevant AIA Regulations include: 

• the Membership Regulations, 
• the Public Practice Regulations, and 
• the Continuing Professional Development Regulations. 

The Complaints, Disciplinary & Appeals Regulations only become relevant to an AIA Member if and when they are informed that a complaint has been made against them or AIA has alleged noncompliance with the Bye-laws, Regulations or Code of Ethics. 

Within the Regulations, the presentation will focus on areas such as: 

• professional indemnity insurance, 
• practice continuity, 
• holding clients’ assets, 
• the use of engagement letters, and 
• firms’ procedures for handling complaints. 

The IESBA Code has been adopted by AIA as its own Code of Ethics. As with the Regulations, failure to comply with the Code of Ethics is likely to give rise to disciplinary action. It is right that AIA not only expects high professional standards of its members and firms, but is seen to take robust and fair disciplinary action to enforce compliance with those professional standards. Reference will be made to the Code of Ethics during the course of the presentation. 

Attendees may expect to identify a few areas that need addressing to ensure they remain (or become) fully compliant with the AIA Bye-laws and the Regulations and Code of Ethics that flow from those Bye-laws. AIA Members are required to plan and undertake relevant CPD, which must be ‘relevant to the Member’s current role and development’. Therefore, this presentation may help you in your CPD planning process (by highlighting areas you may need to research further), as well as providing some practical compliance advice in certain areas. 

The high professional and ethical standards of AIA Members means that there is a link between AIA’s own regulatory framework – your professional obligations – and the recognition of AIA in statute. For example, AIA is included in Part 8 of the Charities Act 2011 as a body whose members may act as independent examiners of charity accounts. It is also an approved Professional Accountancy Body by the Civil Aviation Authority – a body constituted under the Civil Aviation Act 1982. 

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