Do you think Chartered Accountants are losing their charm in India? No , not at all.Read This.

Saurabh Toshniwal

24, CMA, CA, Works at Deloitte, Mentor, Writer, Speaker

No, Chartered Accountants are not losing their charm, it is just that others professions have improved and reached back to their seats, which were taken away by Chartered Accountants. Let's discuss one by one. We are discussing & not debating. Its all about perception.

Point - CAs are going unemployed these days or underpaid.

(a) Accountancy which includes Auditing as a sub-area, is the domain of Chartered Accountants. And this is still intact till today. Chartered Accountants due to their versatility, also provide services relating to taxation, finance, management, costing, etc. though these are not their domain areas. If you see each of these fields are now having specialized people - there are Tax consultants, CFA, MBA, CMA etc. Ofcourse, all of them existed before too, but if you see the improvement they have made in these years is very significant. E.g.Companies Act, 1956 used to allow CA as well to do Cost Audit, but now it is strictly CMA in Companies Act, 2013. ICMAI has improved significantly in the course of these years & regained their position, which was being substituted by CA.

So basically, others have improved - Chartered Accountants are the same as before.

(b) Chartered Accountants are limited in number and costlier to be hired in long run, against other professionals like MBA. MBA are huge in number and any organization can spam their personnel with MBAs, but this is something never happened with CA. I have never seen company spamming their personnel with CA. There are always few CA in proportion to the work, while you always have to hire sufficient number of MBA to do the same. Same is with other substitute products. The fact worth noting is Chartered Accountants are seen as quality, whenever organizations seek quality people, they hire CA and not MBA in roles which are common to both.

So because other professionals are cheaper in hiring (in long run) and available in numbers, they are obviously going to be hired for positions where strictly a quality/dynamic employee is not required.

Point - I am not getting the same respect as I used to get when I entered in CA.

Reply - I am a recently qualified CA & let me tell you, I am living my dream years, if you are talking about respect.

(a) Every other person calls me 'Sir', even those who are quite senior (Non-CA) to me, in terms of age & experience. Not just me, all recently qualified CAs experience this same respect. This respect is never going to wither away. Yes, qualifying in first attempt has now become very common these days against the situation prior to 2006. So students who are not able to qualify in first attempts have received a little less respect as compared to situation that existed before, but its not like any significant difference.

(b) And I don't need to talk about senior Chartered Accountants. They are very highly respected and nothing can affect the respect that an experienced Chartered Accountant enjoys.

Again, yes there are Chartered Accountants who could not do much after doing job. This situation is unique only to CA in jobs. Those in practice have found out their ways. Actually these CA in jobs have not been able to make progress in their knowledge i.e. they possibly didn't stay much updated or stopped improving after joining job. These CA have not earned higher respect & promotion, but this is due to individual reasons and this has nothing to do with CA as a profession.

Just because a few individuals have taken things for granted & stopped improving, you cannot say CA profession is losing respect. CA profession is all about staying updated with the latest events!

(c) Another reason is the increasing number of dummies or low grade articleship or doing articleship with relatives are becoming a disrespect for the institute. These students never make good CA, and therefore, since public doesn't know their reality people think the entire CA profession is such kind.

Point - I have seen many CAs with not so good communication skills and not so good personalities.

Reply - Reasonable Communication skills are enough for our profession, we don't need communication skills to make fake things look real, something that every MBA is taught.

We are in a unique profession where we are not glamorous, but still we are amongst highly paid & popular Indians. And in India, people expect every highly paid person to look like highly paid. But we are Chartered Accountants, we don't live in a glamorous world, but we live amongst a lot of documents, papers & files. Please see our Railway Minister CA Suresh Prabhu, though at such a high post, he still lives the same way.

Again Professionalism is a lot of times linked with behaviour with CA - Articles, well now when I am a Chartered Accountant myself, I feel that behaviour, that strictness was necessary - because then we were boys/girls, but now because of that we are Men/Women. So that articleship stress does make a difference.

My Mom is unofficial promoter of CA profession, she says to every relative "Make your child a CA, he/she will become smart & obedient." Well books we also studied before, articleship is something new - so basically articleship makes the difference & we all know what happens at articleship. So whatever is happening, is happening right.

For detailed reply, you may refer the following answer: Saurabh Toshniwal's answer to Why is the behaviour of Chartered Accountants in India so unprofessional?

Point - Wasting 4 years of young life, and still others are going better than us?

Reply - Not at all a waste. Being a Chartered Accountant is a guarantee, come what may happen, he/she will surely be able earn for his/her living - something that MBAs or other profession can't guarantee, even after investing lakhs of rupees!

The underlying assumption in the above statement is that the person continues the hard work and improves every day. Else it is an individual's failure, since Chartered Accountancy course gives you an insight in almost every field in Commerce stream, making you capable of doing any thing related to Commerce and therefore, there are no chances that a Chartered Accountant goes starving.

It is never a waste, because CA course is not just a course, it is a life - which gives you life lessons! MBA requires just two things - efforts for the CAT exam & Money for college fees. That's all - you are an MBA!

Other professions do provide great knowledge, but what about versatility? Can MBAs practice? Can MBAs go for Government jobs? Do CMA really practice in large numbers like CA do? The answer is No, because the versatility in choosing career path that CA profession gives - no other profession in India gives the same.

It’s a very small first warning, not a threat !

Chartered Accountants are same as before, it is just that their market share is being taken away to a very little extent and yes may be its a small warning as well, but it is surely not a threat! Few fingers are always raised against everyone, that doesn't mean everyone is bad. There are things that ICAI definitely needs to address, so that we can improve, and that not even a single argument is raised against us.

My suggestions in this regard would be -

• Communication Skills & training for grooming & other personality traits, maybe something that IIMs do, since most Chartered Accountants come from middle & lower class society, owing to the high ROI of this course. One such move is the Four Weeks Residential Programme, but still it is out of reach for many students. But atleast a start in right direction.
• More case study based & practical syllabus. So that Chartered Accountants can be more updated & dummies do not qualify. Although if you are a student, life is going to get tough if ICAI makes syllabus more practical, it seems that practical syllabus would be easy, but the reality is totally opposite of it, it will definitely be twice more difficult than existing structure.
• Check over dummy articleship & regulation breakers so that only the deserving people qualify, dummy articles make dummy CAs
• CPE programmes needs to be improved, must include some new methods of staying updated with the changes & also include communication skill refreshment courses.
• Add more common sense subjects in Foundation, like they are in CAT so that people are evaluated thoroughly on basics before they enter CA course. One such move is introducing English subject in Foundation, as per New unnotified syllabus. But I think General Knowledge & general topics must also be added.
• Change regulations, allow more articles in big firms, reduce number of articles in small firms, also disallow articleship under relatives. This will curb down low grade articleship, since this is major reason for the degradation of quality of some CAs.

But overall, the charm is still there! A few flaws are in all professions. It’s like people expect Sachin Tendulkar to hit a century in every match he plays, but that's not possible. So is with Chartered Accountants.