by Helen Brand, ACCA chief executive
Members’ stories never fail to impress me. One of the privileges of my role is attending meetings and gatherings where I hear from members and future members about their work and the challenges they face – and overcome – daily.
While every story is unique a couple of common themes emerge.
Firstly, everyone must deal with the challenge to qualify as an accountant; it does not happen without hard work, commitment and perseverance.
Secondly, listening to our members and partners, including governments, employers, policy makers and regulators, it is obvious how much value the accountancy profession adds – value to the businesses they work in or for, and value to the wider community.
Chief value officer may not be a job title in many organisations – maybe it will be one day. But even without the title I hear constant stories of how accountants are increasingly responsible for creating, measuring and protecting value for organisations. We are not talking just traditional financial management and measures. Organisations’ results dashboards now increasingly feature ethical, strategic, and environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, all with the aim of creating organisations that are sustainable in the long term.
The increasing focus on sustainability reporting by standard-setters, regulators and policymakers is also driving this. Supporting our members and the wider profession on this with input, resources and guidance has been a major focus for us this year.
And we need all this more than ever before. Because there is one challenge above all that faces us all: how do we build a better world? Finance professionals are at the heart of driving that change. We know that our collective efforts drive meaningful change, and that contributes to a better, sustainable future for all.
To answer the most urgent questions, we need to keep attracting the right talent into the profession. ACCA has always worked to keep its qualification relevant for both members and employers, and to ensure our members have access to a wide range of relevant further learning opportunities. That means constant innovation in our education. That is why we launched a Professional Diploma in Sustainability in 2024, building on our expanding range of resources in this area.
Researching and thinking about the vital issues facing accountants is critical. Our global leadership must be innovative if it is to help shape tomorrow. Take two examples from a whole range of work on talent, risk, technology and sustainability. First, in 2024 we published Empowering business: navigating nature-related reporting, which set out the essential role that the accountancy profession has in protecting and restoring the natural world. Previously, accountants did not have to think about how to report on organisations’ dependencies on nature. Now they do, if we are to address the climate challenge. And this report helps to lay the foundations.
Industries and organisations are under increasing pressure from stakeholders to act in a sustainable manner, facing multiple risks if they fail to do so. And nature-related reporting is just one example of sustainability work we’re carrying out on many fronts.
We attended COP 16 on biodiversity and COP29 Azerbaijan. We went to ensure that the accountant’s voice was heard in emphasising the important of building skills in climate finance, business resilience and sustainability reporting. And we will keep doing our best to keep those issues front of mind in 2025.
A second example of our desire to innovate in research is in economics. No one can deny the uncertain world in which we live, and that includes facing shifting economic realities. In a bid to analyse these realities in 2024, for the first time ACCA published a global economic outlook – a companion to our quarterly global economic survey that we undertake with the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). In 2024 this outlook looked ahead presciently to see a world of slow growth and high uncertainty, and the 2025 edition will explore the implications for global trade of the result of the US presidential election.
A final challenge that confronts accountants every day is new technology. Accountants have always been at the forefront of harnessing technology – that is one reason for the profession’s success to date. If the considerable interest shown in our AI research is anything to go by, we can expect the profession to be equally successful in harnessing the opportunities and addressing the challenges offered by AI.
2024 was a year of milestones for the profession – this publication reached 150 years, and ACCA registered more than 0.25 million members in its 120th year. We ended the year with women occupying the positions of president, deputy president and vice-president. This was not through any engineering, but rather it is a demonstration of how this profession is open to all, regardless of background, gender, nationality or anything else.
And while all of us face considerable global challenges in 2025, we can take confidence from the fact that the accountancy profession is in a good place to play its part in overcoming adversity. I look forward to more inspiring stories of how it is helping to create a better, fairer world for all.
