With focus on enhancing Audit Quality Mechanism, benchmarking the global best practices in Sustainability Reporting requirements and Assurance Standards and actively participating in G20 endeavors with the Government of India, CA. Aniket Sunil Talati, President, ICAI addressed the media today in Delhi. 

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CA. Aniket Sunil Talati & CA. Ranjeet Kumar Agarwal were elected as the new President & Vice-President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) w.e.f. February 12, 2023. With more than 3.75 lakh members and over 7.80 lakh students, ICAI is the world’s second largest accounting body. Through its 5 Regional Councils, 168 Branches, 45 Overseas Chapters & 33 Representative Offices, the Institute is taking forward its agenda of inclusive growth & continues to add glory to the profession. 

Informing media about a very important milestone, President, ICAI shared “Taking forward India’s economic growth story, the ICAI has become a prime partner with B20 dialogue. The partnership of ICAI with B20 as a Prime Partner reflects its commitment to support the Government in making India a Vishwaguru.” 

While sharing the most important role of ICAI, President, ICAI shared “The Regulatory framework of ICAI is an intricate system on which the Pious, Glorious and Respectful structure of one of the largest accounting bodies in the world stands. ICAI vigorously and constructively endeavor to make its Regulatory and Disciplinary mechanisms more robust and responsive together with its Disciplinary Directorate, Financial Reporting Review Board, Peer Review Board, Taxation Audits Quality Review Board, Centre for Audit Quality.” 

While talking about Disciplinary cases, he shared that “ICAI has a zero-tolerance policy against any disciplinary case. In few of the cases we have removed members from register of members for life. We are here to do best for the profession and we have kept all the possible mechanisms at place to tackle such cases. The total cases registered under new DC mechanism since 2007 till March 31, 2023 are 6766, out of which 4249 cases have been concluded i.e. on 62.80 % of the cases, ICAI has already taken decision. The balance cases are either at Prima Facie stage or at hearing stage before Board of Discipline / Disciplinary Committee. In the Council year 2022-23, total 112 Meetings were held of the Board of Discipline and Disciplinary Committee, where hearings were concluded in 132 cases and punishments were awarded in 91 cases.” 

Talking further on this he said that “ICAI had conceptualized and developed an innovative concept of Unique Document Identification Number (UDIN) under which a unique number is now generated for every document certified/attested by a Chartered Accountant in practice and registered with the UDIN portal. As on 12^th April 2023, around 4.89 Cr UDINs have been generated and 1.38 lakh Members have registered themselves on UDIN Portal.” 

CA. Talati said that the Institute has recently developed and released the “Guidance Note on Audit of Banks 2023” edition, that provides detailed guidance to auditors conducting audits of banks and bank branches.” Also, the Institute developed and released the “Implementation Guide on Reporting under Rule 11(g) of the Companies (Audit and Auditors) Rules, 2014” (Implementation Guide on Audit Trail) that provides detailed guidance on various aspects of this new reporting requirement introduced by Rule 11(g) of the Companies (Audit and Auditors) Rules, 2014. 

ICAI has always been active in helping Government in its various initiatives and other Countries to promote the Chartered Accountancy profession and implement various concepts that are useful in the functioning of Accountancy Institutes.  

• The Central Bureau of Communication (CBC), Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India had approached ICAI to place systematic reliance on UDIN to assess the veracity of the information certified by Chartered Accountants in the prescribed format for the empanelment of the news agencies based on circulation and rates. It has been decided to execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between ICAI and CBC providing details inter alia the manner of sharing of data, their frequency, the structure of data and the commitments of both the organizations. 

• The Governing Board ofNational Board of Accountants and Auditors (NBAA), Tanzania has approved the introduction of UDIN system in Tanzania. A request has been received from NBAA to share the step-by-step process for implementing the UDIN, as also to share ICAI’s experience and support for implementing UDIN in Tanzania. 

He further added that “ICAI is the official Sponsor of the 7^th Africa Congress of Accountants (ACOA) scheduled from May 15-18, 2023 on the theme “Structural Transformation and Growth of African Economies”, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The Congress will witness the presence of more than 2,000 delegates from 54 African countries around the world.”  

CA. Ranjeet Kumar Agarwal, Vice-President, ICAI while addressing the media shared the details about the 57^th Campus Placement Programme being organized by the Institute for the newly qualified CAs who passed the CA final examination in Nov, 2022.  

Vice-President, ICAI shared “ To connect and bring together the Newly Qualified Chartered Accountants (NQCAs) and the recruiters on a common platform, the scheme of campus interviews was introduced by ICAI to provide prospective employers and the young members an opportunity to interact and explore the possibility of taking up employment in various organizations.” 

With regards to Proposed Scheme of Education and Training, Vice-President, ICAIshared “Expert Groups were constituted for the formulation of syllabi and their suggestions were considered by the Board constituted by ICAI Council. On approval of syllabi, it was submitted to MCA for approval.” 

ICAI has also mandated the Audit Quality Maturity Model rev v1.0 (AQMM) from 1^st April 2023 to all the firms falling under the specified criteria. These firms are required to compulsorily self-evaluate their Audit Quality Maturity using AQMM and get it reviewed by the Peer Reviewer alongside the Peer Review. The level of the firm arrived at by the Peer Reviewer will be hosted on the website of ICAI. 

The Council of ICAI has been working diligently to improve the quality of assurance services provided by its members. Mandating Peer Review in a phase- wise manner is also one of the steps taken in this direction. The first phase has already been implemented w.e.f. April 1, 2022 and considering that some of the Practice Units which required to get themselves Peer Reviewed under the 2^nd phase of the Peer Review mandate are not ready for the same, the ICAI decided to defer the applicability of the second phase of the mandate by three months to be made effective from July 1, 2023 as a one-time measure. 

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