One designation to bind all practitioners

The Life: Management accountancy may not sound like the most exciting of professions. But they perform a vital role by helping businesses to plan for the future, says Andrew Harding of Cima.

Andrew Harding says CIMA membership is growing in the UAE. Nick Cunard

Management accountancy may not sound like the most exciting of professions. But it performs a vital role by helping businesses to plan for the future, says Andrew Harding, the managing director of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (Cima). He explains how and speaks about why professionals should get the new designation"chartered global management accountant" (CGMA).

What do management accountants do?

Management accounting is about providing management with information for decision-making. It's about looking forward. It's not about reporting what happened or calculating the tax payable on what happened last year. It is about planning a business for the future. It's about saying "how is this line performing? What do I need to do to change it to generate better value from it?" Cima was founded originally by Unilever [more than 90 years ago] because it wanted good information with which to run its business.

Is the position more popular in the West or is it just as common in emerging markets?

Management accounting is well embedded in the traditional markets across Europe, increasingly in North America. And when we look around the world, we see in emerging markets, in fast-growth markets more and more demand … for management accountants. I was talking to a chief financial officer [CFO] here in Dubai … and he said any CFO for the future has to be a management accountant. It's not about looking backwards.

What about here in the UAE?

In the UAE, Cima has 2,500 members and students. That's growing year by year. We have had an office here since 2010 and we're seeing a growth in interest.

Cima has just introduced a new designation - a chartered global management accountant. What is it?

It is a designation for management accountants and it comes out from a joint venture which Cima has set up with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The real differentiator for this is that it's the first time there has been a qualification for management accountants which is genuinely global, recognised in North America as well as the other major business centres around the world.

Why did you introduce it?

All too often we find that with other accounting designations, they are often recognised locally and they are sometimes recognised by European-headquartered business and often not understood by American-owned businesses. So what we're doing here is creating a genuinely global designation.

Why should management accountants pursue this classification?

It gives them a designation which recognises their management accounting skills and expertise, and it's a designation which will be recognised by employers across the world, be they headquartered here in the Middle East or in Europe or in North America.

What will they have to do to qualify for it?

The initial people receiving the designation are all members of Cima and American CPAs who have appropriate experience and competence in management accounting. In the future, all students here in the UAE who are studying for the Cima programme, once they qualify and achieve Cima membership, they will also be granted the CGMA designation.

So there are no tests?

There are no additional tests beyond the Cima examinations.

* Gillian Duncan