The 2016 IFAC Global SMP Survey has received 3,996 responses as of today. The survey will close in one week. 

Available in 23 languages, the survey is the largest annual global survey of accountants operating in small- and medium-sized practices (SMPs). Open until November 30, 2016, the survey is expected to yield valuable insights into the global SMP community, which provides services to small- and medium-sized entities (SMEs), commonly known as the “engine rooms” of the global economy.

IFAC is calling on its Member Organizations help promote. In 2015, you helped us collect over 6,700 responses, our largest response yet (see 2015 summary and report).

From now until the survey closes, we’ll be updating this post to share promotional tools, ideas, reminders, and other survey updates.

How IFAC Members Can Help

Help IFAC make this critical intiative a success. All downloads available in the Members-only IFAC Extranet—see 2016 SMP Survey Toolkit (log-in for IFAC members only).

1. Direct Email and Publications: We recommend that you send an email announcement to your members. Download text to reproduce as is, or modify/translate as needed, for email announcement and/or publications (log-in for IFAC members only).
2. NEW! Events: Promote the survey at events by including this slide in your presentation. Download slide (log-in for IFAC members only).
3. Social Media: Use our pre-drafted posts and images to share on social media. Download images for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (log-in for IFAC members only).

Benefits for IFAC Member Organizations

The survey helps IFAC and its members gain an understanding of the specific challenges and opportunities faced by SMPs and SMEs globally, and as a result, better serve this critical constituency.

We invite IFAC member organizations to:

• Request the data for your country so you may produce national-level reports, articles, and analysis (for example, see articles from Germany and Uganda). National data from the 2016 survey will be available by request in February 2017.
• Gain acknowledgement in the final report. Email us to let us know if you help promote the survey so we can include your organization in the 2016 report.

Stay in Touch

Join the IFAC global SMP community on Twitter. Subscribe to receive updates and to stay informed on a variety of SMP issues, including practice management, the survey, and more.

Enhanced collaboration across the accountancy profession’s global, regional, and national levels is a key success factor in achieving strong, sustainable professional accountancy organizations (PAOs), which are crucial to healthy economies. To encourage and support mutually beneficial partnerships that create stronger PAOs and strengthen the accountancy profession, the International Federation of Accountants^® (IFAC^®) today released Counting on Each Other: Establishing & Maintaining Effective PAO Partnerships.

“A healthy economy needs a well-functioning accountancy profession comprised of skilled professionals who contribute to high-quality, decision-useful, and publicly available financial and non-financial information,” commented Alta Prinsloo, Executive Director, Strategy, and Chief Operating Officer. “A strong PAO is essential to the development of skilled professionals. Harnessing the collective knowledge and experience of organizations across the global accountancy profession can help developing PAOs realize their potential.”

The guidance offers practical insights on how to approach partnerships between PAOs, drawing on real experiences and successes. It explores laying the foundations for fruitful collaboration and ideas for managing partnerships effectively.

“The right partnership can support a developing PAO’s journey to reach its full potential and take its place in the global accountancy profession,” continued Ms. Prinsloo. “Effective collaboration can bring clear and sustainable benefits for capacity building, not only to the parties directly involved but also to the broader national, regional, and global accountancy communities. As a profession and community, there is much we can learn from each other.”

The guidance was developed as part of the PAO Capacity Building Series, which includes guidance on PAO governance, PAO advocacy and public policy, and engaging professional accountants in business. The guidance also builds on one of the key findings of the MOSAIC PAO Global Development Report, which cited the effective and efficient nature of knowledge-sharing relationships between PAOs as a means of sharing expertise.

About IFAC
IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. IFAC is comprised of more than 175 members and associates in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions, representing almost 3 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce. 

Illustrating the important relationship between small- and medium-sized practices (SMPs) and their clients—primarily small- and medium-sized entities (SMEs)—the report examines:

Global economic stability can be greatly enhanced by stronger governance across both public and private sectors, and a stable regulatory environment. These principles form the basis of recommendations to the Group of 20 (G-20) by the International Federation of Accountants^® (IFAC^®) today, ahead of the G-20 meeting in China on September 4-5.

“The global economic recovery is uneven, and social and political destabilization risks remain high in many parts of the world. To fortify the recovery, citizens and markets urgently need to see greater transparency across all organizations, which will help restore trust in the institutions that help underpin the world’s financial markets,” said IFAC Chief Executive Officer, Fayez Choudhury.

“The G-20 has new opportunities to create an environment of sustainable, inclusive growth that benefits the world’s citizens. IFAC has consistently urged policy consensus and on-going cooperation between government, business, and the regulatory community. On behalf of the global profession, we renew that call today and ask the G-20 to put trust and transparency at the heart of the world’s economy,” he said.

IFAC calls on the G-20 to address:

• Strengthening governance, which in both the public and private sectors is at the heart of accomplishing the G-20 objectives of recovery, growth, and stability, as well as combatting fraud and corruption and restoring public trust and integrity.
• Promoting and adopting principles for good regulation to create a more consistent, effective international regulatory environment.
• Acknowledging the importance of international standards across all jurisdictions, including international standards for accounting, auditing and assurance, professional ethics and education, and public sector accounting.

IFAC’s full recommendations to the G-20, Trust and Integrity, are posted on the IFAC website.

About IFAC
IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. IFAC is comprised of more than 175 members and associates in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions, representing almost 3 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce.

Recognizing the essential role of professional accountants in business in strong and sustainable organizations, financial markets, and economies, the International Federation of Accountants^® (IFAC^®) today released Engaging Professional Accountants in Business: How to Build a More Relevant PAO and Profession. The guidance will assist professional accountancy organizations (PAOs) in strengthening engagement with accountants in business, the public sector, and academia as a means to expand their reach, influence, and contribution.

“Professional accountants in business drive sustainable organizational success,” said Alta Prinsloo, IFAC Executive Director, Strategy, and Chief Operating Officer. “Their engagement at the global, regional, and local levels will enhance the relevance of the profession and help build a deeper engagement with business and government, ultimately supporting the profession’s contribution to stronger economies.”

Professional accountants in business represent a broad spectrum of expertise and work in many sectors across all types and sizes of organization. Their diversity is a strength and an opportunity, but can make it difficult for PAOs to connect with them. This lack of connection is a detriment to the individual accountants, the profession, the PAO, and—ultimately—the public interest. This guidance supports a stronger connection by incorporating these members into the PAO’s governance and decision-making structures.

The guidance was developed as part of the PAO Capacity Building Series with the help of the IFAC Professional Accountants in Business Committee. It includes a case study from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan.

About IFAC
The International Federation of Accountants^® (IFAC^®) is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. IFAC is comprised of over 175 members and associates in over 130 countries and jurisdictions, representing almost 3 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce.

Almost a decade after the global financial crisis, more than 50 thought leaders from across the public, private, and academic communities called for balanced regulation targeted to specific social outcomes, as well as stronger checks and balances, such as sunset clauses or impact analyses, to measure regulation’s effectiveness and fitness for purpose.

Speaking from the floor during the discussion, Fayez Choudhury, IFAC Chief Executive Officer, noted that, “There is a critical need to review and evaluate regulations on an ongoing basis, and to ensure purpose-built regulation going forward, in order to strengthen the global economy and financial system.”

The group emphasized that—while governments acted decisively and much has been achieved since the crisis—regulation alone cannot solve problems. It must be partnered with stronger corporate governance, and embedding ethics and values in organizations from the top down. These are essential to restore the public’s trust in government and both the public and private sector, which continues to be a vital goal.

“How can we ensure a duty of care to markets and society?” asked roundtable participant Baroness Sharon Bowles. “If you get corporate governance right, it can eliminate the need to regulate every eventuality—the corporate governance space is as important as the regulatory space. And the professions that advise businesses play an important role.”

The current compliance culture, participants said, has replaced responsibility and professionalism with rule-following and “box ticking.” In addition, this culture can lead to overreaction and risk aversion, stifling risk-taking that is essential for entrepreneurialism and growth.

ICAEW Chief Executive Michael Izza said, “We all agree that getting the future of regulation right is vital for the global economy. Regulation must be proportionate. We need to avoid on the one hand growing to a scale where compliance is so complex and costly it is a barrier to all but the largest firms, and on the other obsessive simplicity to the extent that it no longer protects against systemic failure. It will be important for everyone to work together and innovate to find the best solutions.”

The group noted that many responses to the financial crisis were fundamentally national and fragmented, whereas business is increasingly global. Participants called for more coordinated rules and consistent implementation, in line with calls from the G-20 and other global organizations since 2009.

Additional points of consensus from the roundtable included the importance of proportionality to protect small- and medium-sized entities—an engine of global economic growth—from over-regulation and the need for enhanced dialogue across the stakeholder spectrum.

Organized by the International Federation of Accountants^® (IFAC^®) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), the roundtable included senior executives and experts from regulatory agencies, financial markets, government, academia, listed companies, investment funds, and the accounting profession.

The roundtable follows a similar meeting in Hong Kong in December 2015, at which 30 senior representatives of the regulatory, government, professional, investor, business, and academic communities identified ten principles to help guide regulators toward better decisions and protect the global economy from the dangers posed by a patchwork approach to regulation. Previously, IFAC issued a discussion paper, From Crisis to Confidence: the Role of Good Regulation, which examined the impact, benefits, and costs of the current regulatory landscape, and compares internationally recognized principles of good regulation.

About IFAC
IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession, dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. It is comprised of more than 175 members and associates in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions, representing almost 3 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce.

Assessing and understanding the relationship between accountancy expertise and business performance is complex and requires consideration of what accountancy expertise entails, as well as the wide range of performance measures. A new research report released today by the International Federation of Accountants^® (IFAC^®) demonstrates, through a review of existing literature, the positive association between use of professional accountants for expertise and advice, and business performance.

“It has long been assumed that taking advantage of the breadth and depth of experience and expertise of professional accountants helps organizations optimize performance, efficiencies, and more. It is heartening to see robust global evidence in support of this relationship,” said IFAC CEO Fayez Choudhury. “The report finds that organizational development and performance lead to increased use of accountancy expertise, and accountancy expertise leads to superior performance and development.”

The report summarizes the findings by entity size—small- and medium-sized entities (SMEs) and large entities—as important differences exist between studies about each group and in how business performance and accountancy expertise are operationalized and the results interpreted. The research also shows the positive impact professional accountants have on aligning organizations’ goals and actions. Professional accountants are well-suited to play various roles in organizations, including analysis and communication of information, decision making, managing risks, and creating sustainable value—roles that indirectly impact business performance.

Commissioned by IFAC, researchers at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies conducted a literature review of more than 90 academic research papers. The full report details the results while the Key Findings, also released today, summarizes notable insights. The research was facilitated by the University of Dayton in accordance with an agreement with IFAC.

About IFAC
IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession, dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. It is comprised of more than 175 members and associates in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions, representing almost 3 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce.