The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria revealed that it is proposing a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Kingdom’s Financial Reporting Council that will allow its members to obtain audit qualification rights in the UK.
In a statement, ICAN said that the move was premised on the fact that accounting and audit practices have become global.
If the proposed MoU between ICAN and FRC is signed, ICAN members can engage in an audit in the UK.
The idea was mooted during a visit to the UK Financial Reporting Council led by ICAN President, Dr. Innocent Okwuosa as part of activities for the 11th ICAN UK international conference.
Okwuosa explained the Mutual Recognition Agreement between the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and ICAN and made a case for UK FRC to allow ICAN members to leverage the MRA to obtain audit qualification rights in the UK.
The statement quoted the Director of Professional Bodies Supervision, Dawn Dickson to have explained that the UK FRC could grant audit qualification rights to ICAN members after a rigorous evaluation process and hinted that such audit qualification rights have been extended to Australia and New Zealand with South Africa’s being reviewed.
“Nigeria can be given such rights if ICAN can meet all the requirements set by the UK FRC for this,” Dickson said.
He added that both parties then agreed that ICAN should submit its application so that the evaluation by UK FRC could begin.
During the meeting, Okwuosa was also said to have demanded to know the modus operandi of UK FRC, its funding mechanism and supervision of the accounting profession.
In response, Dickson said, “UK FRC focuses only on the audit of listed and public interest companies and their auditors. Any audit firm that is not involved in the audit of listed and public interest companies is not supervised by the UK FRC but by its professional body through the delegation agreement that they have signed with the UK FRC.
“Such a firm is also not required to register with or pay registration fees to UK FRC.”
Credit: punchng.com
