Overview
The ACA qualification has been expertly designed to give your staff the breadth and depth of technical knowledge across accountancy, finance, and business. As well as the professional skills and practical experience needed to become effective and agile business partners in your organisation.
We constantly review the content of the ACA qualification to reflect real life business challenges. Today's most urgent business challenges range from sustainability to rapid changes in technology and the role of ethics in the profession. We work closely with employers, tuition providers, academics and examiners to ensure that the ACA equips the chartered accountants of the future with the skills and knowledge they need to meet these challenges and to be successful.
Benefits
Once qualified, your trainees will officially become ICAEW Chartered Accountants. An attractive title that not only holds value in the finance and business world but shows potential employees and clients that your organisation invests in the training and development of your staff.
With limited entry requirements needed to complete the ACA, anyone of any age can undertake the ACA including school leavers, graduates and existing staff, enabling you to recruit trainees from a wide range of backgrounds and education levels and gain fresh perfectives within your organisation and upskill your current workforce.
Structure
The ACA qualification is made up of four elements which provide your students with a combination of finance knowledge, accountancy skills and real-world business experience.
To achieve the ACA, your students must complete a minimum of 450 days of practical work experience, 15 exams, our professional development ladders, and an Ethics Learning Programme. These key requirements will, however, vary in volume and length depending on the route you offer, the exemptions or 'credit for prior learning (CPL)' and credit for prior work experience available to your students.
Work experience can be undertaken in any of our practical work experience categories as long as your students' progress in breadth and/or complexity throughout training. These include financial accounting, management accounting, audit and assurance, taxation, financial management, information technology, and insolvency.
Exams are positioned at three levels, building in complexity from Certificate to Advanced Level:
- Certificate Level: Accounting, Management Information, Principles or Taxation, Assurance Business, Technology and Finance, Law
- Professional Level: Financial Accounting Reporting, Business Planning, Business Strategic and Technology, Audit and Assurance, Tax Compliance, Financial Management
- Advanced Level: Corporate Reporting, Strategic Business Management, Case Study
ICAEW Chartered Accountants are known for their professionalism and expertise. The professional development element of the ACA prepares your students to successfully handle a variety of situations they will encounter during their careers. Throughout the professional development ladders, you must provide your students with timely feedback on each skill, including adding value communication, decision making, problem solving, ethics and professionalism, teamwork, and technical competence.
Ethics, trust and integrity underpin what all finance and accounting professionals do on a daily basis. Therefore, ethics and ethical considerations are integrated throughout our qualifications - in the Ethics Learning Programme, all exams, and within the professional development requirements.
Success stories
Mercedes HPP has been training ACA students since 2016, using it to develop a team of agile business partners, proficient in professional scepticism, technical financial accounting, and strategic business decision-making. Matthew Roberts, Head of Finance, commented: "The qualification encourages a culture of continuous improvement and professional development which is key to the success of Mercedes HPP."
Shawbrook Bank has been training students through the ACA for over 12 years, and more recently worked alongside ICAEW to establish a tailored ACA training programme to develop and grow talent in-house. "We've had a lot of support from ICAEW. They made becoming authorised very straightforward, and since then there's been a lot of support from their side with everything from posting job adverts to helping our students get up to speed with all the various bits and pieces they need to do to qualify." commented Matthew Hayes, Senior Finance Business Partner and the Qualified Person Responsible for Training (QPRT).
Discover the ACA today
Is your organisation ready to train chartered accountancy talent? Register your interest to speak to our dedicated support team who can guide you through your options, as well as how to become an ICAEW Authorised Training Employer.
Discover more about the main routes to chartered accountancy with ICAEW: