Career changer at 38, to CA? - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

entrep · Member

Career changer at 38, to CA?

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

With ICAEW don't you need a training contract in place in order to study it? Just let me check... Actually, no, they seem to have changed it. However time studying not in contract doesn't count towards your experience requirement.

Generally people find ACCA a more flexible entry point in being able to do the exams whilst earning in their existing careers and then gain the practical experience requirement after completing the exams (although it can take up to ten years to complete the exams).

Finding a training contract can be an absolute nightmare. Its not your age but rather the sheer volume of competition for the few contracts available.

Do you have any contacts in the profession or relevant experience that could make you of interest to a firm or accounts department?

Once you have a training contract and CFAB under your belt taking the rest of the exams for ACA will take another 3-5 years out of your life (seems a lot faster than ACCA) so you will be looking at completion by about 44 years old which is fine.

Onto your aspirations though. Acquisitions and mergers work tends to be the domain of larger firms whose staff for the most part are taken from the milk run and trained straight from Uni. I could be wrong but personally I wouldn't expect career changers to be given much opportunity in that area.

All in all your not crazy but the move may be a lot more problematic than you you expect it to be and the level of study and ingrained knowledge required is a serious step up from what you will be used to as a project manager. That said your ingrained logical approach from your existing career will make the management accounting and performance management parts of the qualification easier to relate to.

Whatever you do don't give up the day job until you have a training contract in place as there is a serious risk that you may never find such in these times where so many with training, quality qualifications and relevant experience would work for free and give a kidney for such an opportunity.

The warnings inherent in the above aside I really wish you the best of luck with the career change, as I am sure that given the opportunity you would be able to do it.

kind regards,

Shaun.

entrep · Member

Getting that training contract doesn't sound very promising then. Not the way the ICAEW put it to me when I discussed it with them. To them it was no problem at all. Perhaps I should be exploring an MBA after all, with a specialisation in finance, and work my way in that way through my contacts in industry.

Thanks for the input Shamus.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi again,

we do have a few ACA's on here who may be a little more positive and upbeat about the prospects of obtaining a training contract so don't despaire on the back of my answer.

Why are you not considering Chartered Certified at all?

The exams are just as difficult as the ICAEW's. More so when you factor in that the ACCA doesn't allow you to take your study book into the exam hall with you!

In fact ACCA paper P2 (AKA the beast) is officially the most difficult of any accountancy exam of any body... But has surprisingly good pass rates when compared to the two options papers.

The world I came from was management consultancy in banking and high finance and across the people that I worked with were a almost all ACCA or CIMA (with a few like myself who got there based on experience rather than qualification). Same story with the management consultancies that I have worked with.

It used to be that to get to ACA status people would do the ACCA qualification then take one additional ICAEW exam to obtain joint memberships but the ICAEW seem to have now closed that route.

That said, getting membership of the ACCA is no easier than the ICAEW in that you still have to have three years relevant experience getting a multitude of performance objectives signed off before you are allowed to use the letters.

On the MBA front in accademic terms with ACCA there's a BSc in accountancy available after you've completed the first nine papers (and thats a real BSc, not one of these American internet ones). Of course, the ACCA qualification trumps the BSc as at P level study you would be studying as Masters (MBA / MSc) level.

After completing ACCA and the experience requirement there is an MBA option with Ocford Brookes University, plus there's a fasttrack option to an MSc.

Actually, that's got me thinking. Does an MBA count as CPD? It certainly seems that it should.

The real reasoning behind this reply is the thought that whilst an MBA is a brilliant achievement. Will it get you where you want to be? Or, will you end up taking the MBA and then looking to do the accountancy qualification in your 40's that you could be starting now.

With effort and application you could do ACCA inside five years (but if you do it alongside work it may take up to ten).

Alternatively you could do the ICAEW qualification whilst looking for that elusive training contract.

I was thinking about this after posting last night and feel that my original response was perhaps a little too negative in that it has to be that the more exams you have already passed self funded the more likely it will be that a firm will be interested in you as they would not be training you from scratch and they still get their 3 years out of you.

The above said, I know that there are an awful lot of people out there that cannot get the required training to use their letters for love nor money.

There is no getting away from that this will be very, very difficult to achieve... But difficult is a long way from impossible.

Good luck going forwards,

kindest regards,

Shaun.

entrep · Member

Thanks for the detailed reply Shaun.

I considered the ACCA route as well, but the flexibility of the CFAB while I continue to work until I'm ready for a training contract was what drew me.

Seems that there may be some flexibility with the ACCA as well. I'll look more into it and see what my options are. I think the best will be for me to contact a few firms and speak to them directly about this. Get it straight from the horse's mouth.

Any ACA's out there on the forum that can give some advice on this?

NickCraggs · Guru

Hi,

I got on a training contract, and did my ACA exams when i was 26, so not as old but still not a graduate, so it is possible. I came home one Monday night, and was a bit hacked off at work, so i just emailed my CV off to all the firms In Scarborough, and by Friday i had a job offer. Sounds easy, i know, but the hard part is working for 5 years for not very much as they are paying all your exam fees, course fees and time out of the office. Quite a few of my friends have done the same so it is possible.

But it isnt impossible, and if you dont try you never will. If you have any questions let me know, and i will be back when i have a bit more time.

Nick

entrep · Member

Hi Nick

Thanks for responding.

I plan on paying my own fees and self-studying. Don't know if this makes me more or less attractive to a firm.

What about trying to do the training component through the banking sector?

Entrep.

entrep · Member

and if I did target the banking sector instead, would the ACCA or the ACA be a better option?

Entrep.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Now that is my territory.

ACCA or CIMA.

Is your background in that field, if not you would be better concentrating on trying to use your project management skills to get in with one of the big four with the intention of eventually moving over to working with one of your banking clients (if you are lucky enough to get the clients that you are interested in working with).

I can pretty much guarantee that if you are not from that world you will not break into it just by having the right qualifications. Basically bankers hire either other bankers, consultants in the banking sector or straight from Uni.

entrep · Member

Well I guess I need to do a bit more homework on ACCA and CIMA. CIMA seems to not be as well regarded as the ACA though. Is that correct, or am I opening up a whole can of worms that I shouldn't be doing on this forum?

My background is not in banking, save for a multi million £ financial services IT project I worked on many years ago at the beginning of my career.

Why is the ACCA the choice over the ACA in banking?

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

entrep wrote:
Well I guess I need to do a bit more homework on ACCA and CIMA. CIMA seems to not be as well regarded as the ACA though. Is that correct, or am I opening up a whole can of worms that I shouldn't be doing on this forum?
There is no arguement from anyone that ACA is top of the tree but the perception is that it is more practice than industry focused.
ACA's comand premium rates so for the areas of banking that I have worked in whilst people would not berejected for being ACA the qualification was given no priority over ACCA or CIMA.
When you have sat some of the higher level ACCA papers you will see why. In academic terms there is no difference in knowledge base between those qualifications.
The big difference with CIMA is that it has the same amount of management accounting study as ACCA but less financial accounting. That said, it is a sound quality qualification that anyone would be proud to hold.
Don't worry about cans of worms on the forum. Despite the name of the forum as many of s here are accountants as bookkeepers with a good selection of ACA, ACCA, CIMA and IFA... Don't think that we have any AIA but I could be wrong.

My background is not in banking, save for a multi million £ financial services IT project I worked on many years ago at the beginning of my career.
Thats going to help at interview that you have previous exposure to finance projects.
Unfortunately they're almost all mutli million £ projects so when you come to start applying for work on that side of the fence they will be more interested in the throughput of the system, error tolerences (zero would be good), inbuilt auditing, accounting systems integration, etc. rather than the cost of the project (except that it was done on time and within budget... like that ever happens! lol).

Why is the ACCA the choice over the ACA in banking?
The perception is that chartered carry higher price tags for the same level of skill and knowledge.
In practice there is no getting away from the fact that a chartered commands a higher rate but in industry the differentiation is less clear cut.
Big four (deloitte, KPMG, E&Y and PWC) have for some time been moving away from ACA and putting graduates through ACCA.
As iceing on the cake supply and demand means that prior experience factor aside ACCA's are not able to command the sort of money paid to ACA's where for ACA's there are actually more jobs available than people to fill them (but there are too many qualified ACCA bods with equal knowledge stacking shelves in Tesco's).
Best comparrison that I can think of is why do you need to buy a Rolls Royce when a Mercedes will do the job just as well in an equally impressive manner.
Worth noting as well is that many ACA's out there actually trained ACCA and then on passing ACCA converted allegiences (which requires one to maintain dual memberships).
I'm not sure if that route is still open but that aside, if you think about it that means that the chartered that one thinks is so above ACCA actually is ACCA and I would have money on it that you could not tell the difference in their work.
When you think about it perceptions a funny old thing.

entrep · Member

My next choice is corporate tax advisory.

Is there an option of doing the training component for the ACCA/ACA in tax, instead of audit, at a firm? Or is audit the main component of a training contract at firms?

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

With the ACCA you initially take nine papers that teach you an accross the board skillset including tax and audit.

Once you have mastered the skills level you take the core which is advanced skills in Ethics, financial accountancy and Management accountancy.

You then choose your specialisations (any two from 4)

These are :

P4 Advancd Finanacial Managemeht
P5 Advanced Performance Management
P6 Advanced Taxation
P7 Advanced Audit

If you were interested in banking you would choose P4 and P5

If Practice P6 and P7.

Advanced Audit with ACCA is actually a bit of a misnomer in that it seems more about finding what a company is doing incorrectly than the technical side of auditing. In many ways it could be thought of as an extension to advanced corporate reporting (which is the core financial reporting paper).

P7 is actually one of my specialisations but I have no intention of offering Audit (litigous nightmare). The reason, as mentioned above is that I feel that it is a paper more linked to what we do in practice in understanding what clients are doing wrong and looking at how to fix it.

For example, misapplication of financial reporting standards, fraud, ethical dilema's etc. Its defintiely one of the most fun of the the papers. Just wished that there was time in the exam hall to do it properly as I could spend the 3 hours on any one question let alone 4 of them.

My other option was P5 as that is the natural pairing of the core paper P3 advanced business analysis which was basically my day job and those two together give you more tools in order to analyse and improve businesses.

So, not answering the ACA part of your question but as far as ACCA goes, no you do not have to take advanced audit.

Right, now onto the question that you did not ask.

ACCA isn't the final step if thats the route that you are looking to go down.

If you take ACCA including paper P6 or ACA then you would be accepted to study CTA. That is the qualification for tax advice.

It is almost always studied as an add on qualification as its near impossible to be accepted as a student unless you first have a quality chartered qualification. The exception to the list of accepted entry points is ATT (Association of Tax Technicians) which is around AAT level but tax focused.

If you are looking for working in corporate tax advice though you should not stop at ATT and also the lack of a financial reporting qualification would count against you so ideally you would be looking at ACCA/ACA and CTA rather than ATT and CTA... Although regardless of otrher qualifications CTA's are worth their weight in gold.

All in all I still advise ACCA as it gives you a good well rounded knowledge base then allows specuialisations and for things such as tax advice its a stepping stone to CTA if that is the route that you are looking t go.

HTH,

kind regards,

Shaun.

entrep · Member

Very interesting. Thanks for that nugget Shaun. Breaking the ACCA down like that has cleared it up for me.

I've also read the link you posted in another post on the FRC's key facts and trends in the accountancy profession. From that bit of information, it seems that ACCA is something to shoot for for my requirements.

It looks like my student age group, 35-44, from the FRC paper, is also more inclined to take the ACCA route. Wondering if that has anything to do with the fact that there are more industry and commerce employees doing the ACCA rather than in public practice. Us older career-changers with families would look for the more flexible of the options. Especially if there's not much difference in the quality of content, as you mentioned.

One more question (for now). I should probably give the ACCA a call and ask, but I'm here now and typing, so I might as well ask you.

During the training contract, does your work focus on your chosen specialisation, e.g. P4 and P6, or do you have to be signed off on a wide variety of key areas, including audit and the other areas?

Entrep.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi,

the experience needs to be signed off accross quite a few key areas which in some instances may mean needing to change jobs several times to get some of the additional bits and bobs that you will need.

The idea from ACCA's perspective is that whilst we may have specialisms all ACCA people have a core knowledge and experience base.

The really good thing with ACCA is that you can take all of the exams before gaining any of the experience which is why many people in the 30+ age bracket choose that route in that you can pass the exams to make yourself appealing to an employer in order to get the experience whereas with ACA you really need interest from a suitable firm before you start and you cannot get that interest without either experience or qualification so bit of a catch 22.

I do however believe that ICAEW now allows people to take their exams outside contract which I feel has been a knee jerk reaction to more and more people going ACCA.

I will say that I do understand completely your original perception about ACA being what to aim for but I hope that this discussion about ACCA as an option has helped you realise what a quality equivalent qualifiaction it is.

kindest regards,

Shaun.

p.s. for more information on the personal experience requirements look up PER on the ACCA website. (www.accaglobal.com). There is loads more information over there than I could hope to convey.

entrep · Member

Thanks. I've found the performance objectives handbook on the ACCA site which seems to go into good detail.

I appreciate all the input. It has helped me navigate through everything a lot easier.

NickCraggs · Guru

Shamus wrote:

The really good thing with ACCA is that you can take all of the exams before gaining any of the experience which is why many people in the 30+ age bracket choose that route in that you can pass the exams to make yourself appealing to an employer in order to get the experience whereas with ACA you really need interest from a suitable firm before you start and you cannot get that interest without either experience or qualification so bit of a catch 22.
You need to get 240 days of work experience.

I do however believe that ICAEW now allows people to take their exams outside contract which I feel has been a knee jerk reaction to more and more people going ACCA.
i think you still need to be on a training contract to sit the final case study,

entrep · Member

Hi guys

I've got another question. Is it possible to do "training outside public practice" for the ICAEW ACA training component, or is it required that training be done in public practice. I've noticed that a few other CA bodies allow training outside public practice, to follow a financial management-related route.

Thanks

Entrep.

WendyT · Member

Hi Entrep

I just wanted to comment on how long it takes to complete the ACCA exams (if you should choose this qualification). I think that Shaun said it takes between 5 and 10 years. Actually it can be a lot quicker, it all depends on how many papers you sit each year and how many you pass first time. I completed all my exams in 2 1/2 years.

You will need 3 years relevant work experience, which can be gained either during or after the exams. Some people find it much easier to get a relevant job after they have funded the first few papers themselves.

Good luck whatever you decide.

entrep · Member

Thanks for the info Wendy.

Any idea whether one can do the ICAEW ACA training outside of public practice? or only in public practice?

entrep · Member

No need to respond to my last post. I see that you can do training outside of public practice.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi Wendy,

2.5 years is some going to get through 14 papers. Well done to you.

You werem't on one of the big four fast tracks were you?

My time estimate is more geared to those doing the qualification in addition to holding down a job and raising a family at the same time as doing the qualification.

From 2.5 years I am assuming that was sponsored study.

Personally throughout most of the period of my exams I was working as a management and technical consultant / project manager in the banking sector and whilst occassionally there were sittings where I had paid for exams but project deadlines meant that I was unable to attend the exam days I still do not think that I could have got anywhere near to your speed even if I had sat every one.

what was your study technique? Did you attend courses or like the majority of the people studying ACCA on here self teach from the books?

Were your exams taken under then old style exams (3.1, 3.2, etc) or new style (P1, P2, etc).

I will say that under the old style I passed every exam first time but under the new style even though they give an extra 15 mins reading time I really struggle with the time management and it is always running out of time rather than not knowing the subject that gets me.

The above said, the new style exams are no more difficult than the old style. I actually think that they are technically easier and for applicable papers I still practice with my stock of the old style paper (which it seems have now all disappeared from everywhere except my hard drives). There was definitely much more emphasis on calculation in the older papers.

In the newer ones there are still many calculations but the calculations themselves no longer carry many, if any marks in the marking scheme.

Just compare something like Advanced Performance Management now to how it used to be.

I love the old style questions where you have a huge up front calculation (Geeland bus company was brilliant) but questions now are all about application of performance models rather than calculations and to be quite honest its taken a lot of the fun out of it.

A couple of years back sitting P5 I could not even work out what the question was let alone the answer. Came out of the exam hall thinking my god am I thick but turned out that it was an accross the board issue.

Just look at the pass rates now compared to what they were pre change of qualification. Have IQ's dropped? I don't think so. I think that the issue is that the exams now require so much more writing but for no additional time.

Actually using that one as an example just look at the pass rates of old style compared to new.

Old style syllabus % pass rates were constantly in the 40's and 50's (last sitting of the old syllabus was 56% pass rate). Under the new style sitting that dropped to the highest pass rate in the past 5 sittings being 35%! (and the lowest 29%!!!).

I can see why the ACCA did it, not least that the scrapping of having to pass the core (last 3) in a final sitting meant that people sitting under the new approach could be deemed to be having an easier time of it than those who went before but the problem is that I feel that they over compensated and to complete these papers properly, even doing them at break neck speed really needs 4 hours not 3 to even stand a chance of completing the paper properly.

kind regards,

Shaun.

WendyT · Member

Hi Shaun

I remembered 2.5 years through rose tinted glasses. Thinking back I finished my exams in 3 years but I could have finished in 2.5 if I had first time passes in everything (which I didn't). I qualified in 2003 under the old style papers. I had exemptions from 2 papers so I only sat 12, and passed 10 first time.

Congratulations to you raising a family at the same time. I was in my early twenties so life was more manageable and I had a very generous study allowance from my employer which no longer exists. They gave me lots of leave per exam and paid for study with BPP.

How many papers do you have left to complete ACCA?

I wasn't in the big 4 - unsuccessful after an interview with Arthur Anderson (who is the lucky one now?! :o) although if I had qualified in practice I would have a practice certificate and not be emailing the ACCA about tax self-assessments! LOL.

Best wishes
Wendy

NickCraggs · Guru

For ICAEW you need to get the 240 days work experience obtained on an approved training contract, which doesn't have to be in practice. You also need to pass the exams, however, it is only the casestudy that you need to on the training contract when you sit.

Other than that it pretty flexible, for example, i was allowed to operate as an AAT member in practice, whilst i was studying which ACCA wouldnt allow you to do.

Kind regards

Nick

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

WendyT wrote:
Hi Shaun

I remembered 2.5 years through rose tinted glasses. Thinking back I finished my exams in 3 years but I could have finished in 2.5 if I had first time passes in everything (which I didn't). I qualified in 2003 under the old style papers. I had exemptions from 2 papers so I only sat 12, and passed 10 first time.

Congratulations to you raising a family at the same time. I was in my early twenties so life was more manageable and I had a very generous study allowance from my employer which no longer exists. They gave me lots of leave per exam and paid for study with BPP.

How many papers do you have left to complete ACCA?

I wasn't in the big 4 - unsuccessful after an interview with Arthur Anderson (who is the lucky one now?! :o) although if I had qualified in practice I would have a practice certificate and not be emailing the ACCA about tax self-assessments! LOL.

Best wishes
Wendy

Hi Wendy,

only P7 (the old 3.1) to go which I've sat now and results are pending.

I know that I've dropped at least 12% of the marks on unfinished questons so now its just a matter of whether enough of the points that I did make are on the markers list.

I had exemptions from the first three but sat them anyway as ACCA exemptions as you know work like a guaranteed pass so I was thinking if I've got to pay full price for them then I'm going to sit them.

Quite thankful that I did as others that I started out with at the same time who took the expmptions dropped out after a couple fo exams.

2003 was an excellent vintage.

I've got a collection of a lot of the BPP books from that year (the old dark green ones) as it was the last set of classics before they started dumbing down their study texts. Their new approach works for some but not for me.

If a page has emphasis on a papragraph I will tend to take in that paragraph but little else. Their changes made me move over to Kaplan texts which have a more read, try, repeat with increasing difficulty approach and I'm definitely more of a learn by doing approach sort of person.

On the big four I seemed to have the worst of all worlds as I worked with KPMG basically as KPMG but was an independant consultant so got non of the perks that went with it.

I've worked for Andersens twice and whilst no problem with the work that they did I had issues with the way that they treated people that they did not see as equals.

I think that it was a quote from Goethe who said that (might be slightly misquoting it) You can judge the character of a man by how he treats those below him.

And being honest there was not a lot of character amongst the droids who seemed to see everyone who was not one of them and could not directly influence their income as somewhere between an amoeba and pond slime (to be fair the Australian one's were slightly better than the UK one's).

I was not one of those they could ignore but they alienated themselves from me by the way that they treated others (Personally I will chat to the cleaner and security gaurd as easily as I would a director... Occassionally with slightly more respect as well, lol).

I have not found the droid attitude evident working with PWC or KPMG (only worked briefly with E&Y in passing so not enough to comment on them. Not worked with Deloitte at all).

Talk later,

Shaun.

entrep · Member

Thanks Nick.