A Guide to Finance Qualifications | Spencer Clarke Group

00:00 Title
00:06 What Are the Different Qualifications Within Finance?
01:01 Why Are Finance Qualifications Important?
01:50 Which Qualifications Are Highly Sought After?
02:23 How Can Qualifications Help With Salary Expectations?
03:20 What Is the Best Way To Obtain Qualifications?
03:58 Get in Touch With Shannon
00:06 What Are the Different Qualifications Within Finance?
There are two main types of qualifications within finance, you’ve got your chartered qualifications and your bookkeeping qualifications.
With your bookkeeping, which is usually your entry level roles, so Accounts Assistants, it could even be an apprenticeship for an accounts role, they tend to be sort of your AAT, sorry your Association of Accounting Technicians and your finance qualifications, so chartered qualifications within the UK are CIMA, ACCA and ACA.
CIMA has had a recent update and is now CGMA, so it is slightly different, so essentially the CIMA one, which is for management accounts, that’s usually sort of more within industry roles. You’re looking at manufacturing; a lot of the case studies are based around manufacturing and your ACCA and ACA tend to be more practice based qualifications.
01:01 Why Are Finance Qualifications Important?
These qualifications really help you with marketability within the accountancy and finance market because it shows that you’re dedicated to your market.
It’s also a sign of quality as well. Just like you would use a certified Mortgage Advisor when you’re looking for a property, you would look to find someone who was a Chartered Accountant as well.
Ideally if we’re looking to get sign off for certain things, it gives that quality to that qualification and you also know that they’ve been through a stringent process to get to where they are.
Also with the AAT, you do have to keep up to date with the membership and then you can check various registers, so it just gives that little bit more of an oomph behind your experience.
01:50 Which Qualifications Are Highly Sought After?
The management accounts side, as I mentioned before, tends to be your CIMA qualifications because you are looking more into the analysis and what the future holds from the data that you’ve got from your accounts and from your finance team.
Whereas, your ACCA and ACA qualifications are more financial accounting qualifications - they’re looking more at the statutory, the regulatory side, dealing with HMRC, VAT and various other tax regulations as well, as well as international accounting.
02:23 How Can Qualifications Help With Salary Expectations?
A qualification can really help your salary expectations when you’re looking within accounts and finance.
The AAT side of things isn't going to have a huge amount of impact but it is something that is going to make you more appealing to step up into other roles.
So say for instance you’ve done your AAT and you want to move into a Chartered Accountants role, whether that be a Financial Accountant, Finance Business Partner, Management Accounts, if you’re fully AAT qualified, then that’s going to make you more attractive to potential employers because it’s easier for you to get onto the next level.
Whereas, when you’re looking at a Chartered Accountants role, if you’ve got a candidate that’s got ten years experience within a management accounts role and you’ve got someone that’s got five years experience plus the qualification, most employers will go for the qualified candidate and they’ll probably on average earn about 5k more, so it can make a huge difference to have that qual.
03:20 What Is the Best Way To Obtain Qualifications?
There’s various different routes that you can go down with regards to qualifications so it could be you do an apprenticeship as an AAT and then advance onto your CIMA and ACCA qualifications.
It could be that you go to university because if you do get an accounts and finance degree, or you do a business degree with elements of accounts and finance, you can have exemptions within there, or you can just work at it and do it yourself with self study. There’s so many different options to get that formal qualification with accounts and finance.
Contact Shannon McGarry
01772 954200 | [e-mail]
www.spencerclarkegroup.co.uk/
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