In 2017, ​I wrote about the "seller" pays conundrum that most SMPs face when they have clients that don't need or want an audit. Are there situations where assurance is desired? Yes; when you have shareholders that needs to be assured. And in such situations, they are the ones who would foot the bill.
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That is why the issue is less pronounced for the Big 4, who have the lion's share of such clients. But SMEs form the lion's share of most economies, and assurance is not particularly desired or needed when you have just one or two shareholders. And the SMPs would have the lion's share of such clients.

Audit exemption thresholds alleviates this to a certain extent; lesser companies would find themselves required by law to be audited. But an audit may still be required due to regulatory requirements, bank conditions for loans, supplier demands, or government conditions for grants. So in such situations, we are back to the same conundrum when statutory audits were mandatory across the board - those demanding the audit are not the ones paying for it.

If you're in a business selling a service to customers who don't want or need it but are made to pay for it, there is likely to be no value proposition for them. On the contrary, they would be quite opposed to whatever value you are trying to propose...and price.

To make the situation even more impossible for SMPs, recent changes to the auditing standards and the Accountant's Act require more work to be perform to increase audit quality. But who wants to pay for quality? This coupled with rising staff costs as a consequence to attracting talents, one can imagine the sense of impossibility a SMP practitioner face in doing this piece of business.

Even further raising the audit exemption threshold would not help as I believe the root cause is those who require the assurance is not paying for it. And in the entire industry, only the Public Accountant faces this. In tax compliance, clients need tax agents because they lack the expertise to prepare and file returns. In accounting services, businesses need proper bookkeeping for decision-making.

These systemic challenges also explain why fewer and fewer talents are choosing public accounting. While not all audit engagements are viewed as reluctant purchases, the continuing perception of audit as a compliance burden rather than a value-added service makes the profession less attractive...and less appreciated.

Making the ones who need the service pay for it should not be as radical as it seems. Pre Covid-19, I was told there were considerations to make this happen. I do hope it has not been totally abandoned now. Also, I was told there are already jurisdictions where this was already so.

Removing the opposition to the value of audit is critical as this service is deemed the pinnacle of the profession. And for SMPs, this is existential. How can we attract talented professionals to a service that clients view as a grudging compliance cost rather than a value-add? How can we maintain quality and professional standards when their compensation is constantly under pressure? 

The solution isn't complex. Those who require assurance - be it shareholders, banks, or regulatory bodies - should be the ones funding it. Until we make this shift, audit services by SMPs will remain stuck in a cycle of diminishing perceived value and increasing professional frustration.

About two weeks ago, at the annual Public Accountants' Conference held by ISCA (Practitioner Renaissance), the highly respected Mr. Ho Kwon Ping (Founder, Banyan Group) gave a keynote speech. What struck me during the speech, amongst other valuable insights, was his waxing lyrical of the value his accountants and auditors bring to the table.

It must have been a great surprise for him then to learn that the profession is facing a crisis not only locally, not only regionally, but also globally.

Yesterday, ISCA held another engagement session with the SMPs and sought to gather our feedback and take on what still needs to be addressed to tackle the issue at hand. The efforts taken so far by ISCA (shared to us during the session) in this area are heartening, and kudos to them for even wanting to learn what more can be done from us smaller stakeholders.

One of the efforts to promote the attractiveness of the profession was to market how well the profession can pay. To prove this point, the Big 4 led the charge and publicized raising their starting pay by about 20%.

I opined that while this is one way to make the profession more appealing again, I can't shake the feeling that we are still missing the forest for the trees. Most folks out there still don't know what our profession does, beyond the perceived convention that we are bean-counters and checkers and analysts, etc. What's so great about that?

In contrast, most people know what a doctor does, what a lawyer does. So what does the accountant do? Balance the books? Prepare boring highfalutin statements and reports? Surely this isn't what Mr. Ho values from the accountants serving him?

In 2017, I happened to overhear a loud conversation discussing the importance of financial statements. And while I wished I had been the one to crystallize the concept, this gentleman's take and brilliant point was that the financial statements are the language of business. Any business out there wanting your investment would like to tell you how great and successful their business is, but only through the financial statements can that be articulated properly. The reporting standards form the grammar of the language, allowing businesses to speak a common language when telling their story through financial statements.

From this wonderful snippet, I would (and have said to many people over the years) say that Accountancy is the study of the language of business. And accountants are its linguists. When I shared this with the ISCA President two years ago, his initial remark was 'what's so great about that?' Who would be interested in that?

I countered that while it might not be great and while it might not interest many; at the very least we can now tell people what it is that we do exactly. More importantly, this is our purpose: to help businesses tell their story. The accountant from the business writes the story, the accountancy-trained analyst analyzes the story, and the auditor checks out the story.
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So if that interests you and you aspire to be a storyteller for businesses, go study Accountancy! And do hit us up once you're there and out of there!