CA magazine: September 2022
By Sarah Speirs, ICAS Executive Director of Member Engagement and Communication
31 August 2022
A strong corporate and financial strategy is crucial to help businesses navigate the choppy waters ahead. In alignment with the beginning of strategy season, this month’s edition of CA magazine assesses the strategic influences, factors and trends that will come to the fore in 2023, with perspective and insight from political figures, entrepreneurs and thought leaders.
This month we welcome our new intake of graduates at ICAS. This is always an exciting time as we see 800 or so young adults start their training and begin their professional journey towards becoming a qualified CA. We are seeing greater diversity with each new cohort, and ICAS is firmly committed to bringing in trainees from diverse social and economic backgrounds.
There has been a succession of recent reports on social mobility in the UK, all reaching the same conclusion – that Britain needs to do better. Sadly, this has been the story for many years.
Increasingly, however, more companies and organisations are getting involved in social mobility programmes. It is important these are not mere exercises in ticking the CSR box, but genuinely help to make a difference.
ICAS recently joined Rise, an initiative to help young people from underprivileged backgrounds achieve their aspirations. Our partners in this initiative include ICAEW, EY, KPMG and PwC. Over the course of this academic year, Rise will deliver 50 workshops to 3,000 pupils at schools across the UK. The programme complements our existing work on social mobility with the ICAS Foundation.
ICAS’ 2022 cohort will go on to bigger and brighter things. This issue we hear from a few CAs who have progressed all the way to the C-suite . Although there is a lot of talk about creating diverse boardrooms, that isn’t always being converted into action. As a recent study of 1,675 companies worldwide showed, only 10% of executive directors are female. There is clearly still much work to be done.
Last, but far from least, this month sees ICAS Vice-President Alison Cornwell CA embark on her charity bike ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats to raise £25,000 for the ICAS Foundation. We wish Alison good luck. You can find out more and make a donation here. I hope you enjoy the issue.
Find out more about ICAS' involvement with Rise