Country survey: Spain

Continuing with our country focus series, this month Joe Pickard hears from Javier Quintana, CEO of the Instituto de Censores Jurados de Cuentas de España (ICJCE) to find out about the main challenges facing auditors in Spain

The Accountant: How many full members does the ICJCE have in Spain? How many student members are there, and what is the male-female split?

Javier Quintana: The ICJCE has 4,535 members, of which 78% are men. The weight of women is improving every year, albeit slowly, thanks to the fact that in the latest calls for the audit accreditation exam, the number of passes of both sexes is around 50%.

The ICJCE is a professional body made up only of auditors, so the rest of the accounting experts who are usually associates in the professional bodies of other countries, or students, are not full members. However, the ICJCE firms have formed a group called ‘collaborators’ made up of professionals who do not yet have the auditor accreditation, and which is made up of 1,500 people.

In order to represent the accountancy profession and promote its legal recognition, 10 years ago we created in association with the Spanish economist professional body, Consejo General de Economistas, a new initiative: the Spanish Accountant Forum (REC). It now has more than 6,000 members, but as I said, it’s not a professional body.

TA: What are the main challenges and opportunities for accountants in Spain currently?

JQ: There are five main opportunities and challenges for auditors in Spain:

1. Maintaining the current growth rate. Audit turnover in the last decade has grown by more than 40%. Sustainability is seen as the greatest opportunity for all kinds of firms.
2. Maintaining quality levels both in audit work and in new work to be carried out in the field of sustainability.
3. Proper talent management, taking into account the need to attract and retain, changes in labour legislation and the opportunities that AI will offer.
4. Implementation of AI in organisations and in response to customer demand.
5. Official accounting expert recognition. This accreditation does not exist in Spain.

TA: What are the main priorities for your organisation for the next year?

JQ: The main priorities for ICJCE are:

1. Providing members with the best possible training, which is always at the forefront.
2. Improving training of our Technical department with the support of AI tools while maintaining one of our great assets: personal treatment. The technical department offers advice on a recurring basis to our members and is the most valued ICJCE service.
3. Strengthening collaboration with the university.
4. Continuing to work hard so our institutions and politicians listen to us when they address reforms that affect our members or activities related to transparency.

TA: Is accountancy still seen as an attractive career choice in Spain?

JQ: Other subjects are gaining influence in the governing bodies of universities. This trend is causing accounting, auditing or finance-related subjects to cease to be present in academic programs, and there are fewer and fewer professors of these subjects.

In other words, until recently we were increasingly concerned that students would choose other areas of professional development that they found more attractive.

Now what worries us is that students are not having the opportunity to choose accounting and finance in many universities because the subjects are not taught and there are fewer professors and researchers in the financial area.

In order to avoid this problem, we have to change the way in which professional bodies relate to universities and ensure that accounting, auditing and finance regain their political weight in the academic world.

On the other hand, when we have the opportunity to explain what an auditor really does through some personalised activities that we are organising – such as ‘auditor for a day’ for students or our famous ‘audit escape rooms’ – we see that young people are delighted, surprised and a significant number send their CVs to the firms in a short time. So, yes, I think we’re still attractive.

TA: What is the public opinion of the accountancy profession in Spain?

JQ: Studies show that perception is good, especially in the business world, thanks to which society understands that when there are economic problems or a need for better financial controls, auditors should be used. The problem is that a gap in the perception of their work persists, so it is often not well understood what an audit is. We hope that sustainability, by affecting many areas of society with which we have not worked so far, will help to reduce this gap