At the IFAC Chief Executive (CE) Forum held earlier in March this year, CAPA President Dr. Chen Yugui, was invited to provide his perspectives from an Asia-Pacific context on professional accountancy organisation (PAO) relevance and sustainability, and how PAOs are adapting to the new environment. The session titled ‘PAO Transformation and Evolution’ aimed at focusing on the themes that emerged from IFAC’s COVID-19 Survey.

One of three (3) introductory session panelists, Dr. Chen was joined by Barry Melancon, Chief Executive Officer, Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (the Association)* and Helen Brand, Chief Executive, ACCA*. The opening remarks of the session were provided by Asmâa Resmouki, IFAC Deputy President, who emphasized the importance of seizing new opportunities and collaborating as a community.

The video recording of the session is now available on IFAC’s Youtube channel.

Dr Chen’s remarks, which are available from 24:00, focused on CAPA’s survey of its members in late 2020, particularly on the findings in relation to:

• The outlook for PAO sustainability; and
• Trends in PAO digital transformation.

For the full summary of findings from the survey, refer to the CAPA article entitled ‘The Accountancy Profession in the New Normal’.

The introductory panel was followed by three (3) national case studies including one from CAPA Member, the Mongolian Institute of Certified Public Accountants (MonICPA) on how the Institute accelerated its digital transformation journey as a result of the impact of COVID-19, by moving its CPA examinations online. The case study delivered by Batkhuyag Myagmar, MonICPA’s Deputy Director who is also a member of CAPA’s Ethics Group, can be viewed here.

*The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and ACCA are members of CAPA. The former is one of two PAOs forming the Association