The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) plans to discontinue remote examinations from March 2026, reported the Financial Times.

The move will mean most candidates must return to in-person exam centres, as the organisation responds to increasing instances of exam misconduct.

It comes after a review of remote invigilation, which was introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic to allow students to continue qualifying.

The ACCA, which has 257,900 members and more than 500,000 students worldwide, concluded that online exams had become harder to supervise effectively.

Helen Brand, the ACCA’s CEO, told the FT the technological developments had made policing remote assessments more challenging, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence tools.

She said the organisation had worked “intensively” to prevent misconduct, but added that “people who want to do bad things are probably working at a quicker pace”.

The move is set against a backdrop of exam-related scandals across the accounting profession.

Firms including PwC, KPMG and Deloitte have been fined millions of dollars in jurisdictions such as the US, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands.

In 2022, EY agreed to pay $100m to US regulators over allegations that dozens of employees cheated on an internal ethics exam and that the firm misled investigators.

Those cases involved internal assessments run by firms rather than professional qualification exams overseen by bodies such as the ACCA.

In the UK, the accounting regulator warned firms in 2022 that it had identified multiple instances of exam misconduct.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales said in 2024 that reports of cheating were still rising, although it and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland continue to allow some online exams.

The ACCA said it remained confident in the robustness of its assessment processes, but that rapid advances in technology had pushed remote testing to a “tipping point”.

The change coincides with a broader overhaul of its main qualification, the first in a decade, which will place greater emphasis on areas including AI, blockchain and data science.

Brand said AI had “fundamentally shifted” the skills accountants need, adding that new ACCA modules will use real-time simulations to help students apply professional scepticism to evolving scenarios rather than relying on “a static exam”.