Inside ICAS: March update from the Office Bearer Team
An update from the ICAS Office Bearer Team on what’s been happening at ICAS over the past month.
President Catherine Burnet CA, Deputy President Bruce Pritchard CA and Vice President Indy Hothi CA bring you a monthly round-up of ICAS news.
Catherine Burnet CA, ICAS President
“We celebrated International Women’s Day on 8 March with an ICAS Insights webinar featuring successful CA speakers from the education, fashion and sport sectors. They shared their career journeys, including the challenges they faced along the way. I was also delighted to share a video message with Members calling for vigilance that the pandemic does not damage progress towards gender equality.”
Bruce Pritchard CA, ICAS Deputy President
“The long-awaited BEIS Consultation on Corporate Governance and Audit Reform was issued this Month. ICAS issued a press release welcoming the consultation and calling for greater focus on driving forward change in the key areas that will improve the UK's corporate ecosystem.”
Indy Hothi CA, ICAS Vice President
“Adding to ICAS’ International Women's Day celebrations, I met Sumati Sharma CA, Partner, Aviation at management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, to discusses her work to improve gender equality, the importance of transparency in business and founding the Women in Aviation & Aerospace Charter which is committed to creating a more balanced and fair industry for women. You can hear our conversation in the CA Agenda Podcast.”
Other news and updates
Our webinar series this month included an ICAS Insights webinar ‘The USA Post Election’ with Kristi Kennedy at EY's Public Policy Office in Washington and Shauna Steele at EY's Public Policy Regulatory Network. The event considered some of the changes that have already taken place since Joe Biden was elected, with the experts guiding us through his first 100 days.
Our Ask ICAS webinar provided a detailed analysis of CJRS, SEISS and other COVID business support announcements from the Chancellor's spring budget. The budget also led to ICAS participating in briefings with the Scotland Office and in a private feedback session with HMRC.
Our work to influence recovery from the pandemic continued, and we took part in a meeting of the Scottish Government COVID19 Business Update group. We were pleased to see number of references to oral evidence provided by ICAS in the Treasury Select Committee's report into 'Tax after Coronavirus'.
ICAS also met with the Scottish Government National Performance Framework Unit as part of a collaborative initiative to drive awareness and engagement across the Scottish economy on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We will be reporting on how ICAS has aligned our activities over the last 12 months with the SDGs in our 2020 Annual Review which will be published in April.
We undertook a range of work relating to climate change in March, including responding to the DWP consultation, 'Taking action on climate risk’. ICAS also chaired the first meeting of the newly established Chartered Accountants Worldwide Task Force on Climate Change and COP26 to discuss ways in which the network could collaborate.
March also saw the publication of the latest edition of Audit News. This regular publication is prepared by Audit Monitoring and policy staff to keep audit firms and Responsible Individuals updated on the key legal and regulatory developments.
We are pleased to update that in March our monitoring contract with Audit Scotland – a four-year contract which was due to conclude this year – was extended for another year.
Finally, we were happy to see that followers to ICAS' LinkedIn account continue to rise and passed 12,000 this month.