Adela Sova, ACCA: “We see AI as a big opportunity for accountants”

“At ACCA we are conducting research every year to see the global talent trends. We are the biggest accounting body in the world. At some point we were the fastest growing as well. We are currently counting more than 250,000 active members within the ACCA.

Our latest study was conducted on 10,000 members globally, with representation from 157 countries.

So, the results – and I will link this to prioritization as well, we believe that this is where we should prioritize with our businesses – relate to AI and for accountants we see this to be a big opportunity.

Unfortunately, more than a third of the respondents don’t see it that way and this is one of the challenges of our today’s business environment,” Adela Sova, International Assembly Representative for Romania, ACCA said at Romanian Business Services Forum organized by Outsourcing Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“And now they relate the AI and this threat, let’s say to mental health as well. And the fact that mental health remains a major challenge.

And 57 percent of our respondents said that their mental health suffers because of work pressures, out of which one of them seems to be the AI. So, this is not really comforting maybe for most of us. Hybrid working still remains a hot topic, somehow unexpectedly for us as an organization.

And then we move into something we were not really expecting to see, which is companies being asked to widen their conversation on diversity and inclusion. And with diversity, basically neurodiversity is what came up to be what we should be looking into more extensively and what we should bring more extensively into the workplace. And linked to this, a strength-based approach may be something we could look into.

There was the last topic which came out. And again, this is a global study. It relates to the pay in the profession. About 60% of the respondents said they will be asking for a pay raise this year. 50% of them believe they will not get it in their current workplace, and they think of switching jobs actually.

Starting from this research, we do believe that this is where we should start looking into more thoroughly un order to get the results we want to get.”

ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is a globally recognised professional accountancy body providing qualifications and advancing standards in accountancy worldwide. 

Founded in 1904 to widen access to the accountancy profession, ACCA supports a diverse community of over 252,500 members and 526,000 future members in 180 countries.