THE shortage of accountants has led to cases where audit managers can have as little as three years' experience and this can impact the quality of audit reports, a situation that the regulator is looking at closely.
Singapore is facing a labour crunch of experienced accountants, a not uncommon affliction also affecting other professions but it is said to be worst here because there are no regulatory or jurisdictional hurdles for accountants to work anywhere in the world unlike lawyers or doctors, participants at yesterday's Association of Chartered Certified Accountants annual conference heard.
At some audit firms, the audit managers may have less than five years' experience, or are promoted to a senior position after just eight months on the job, they were told.
'Accounting professionals used to have 12 years' experience; this has fallen to three years, by default,' said one participant.
Another said he heard of auditors signing off work they had not had time to look at because they were too busy.
'Common feedback we have been hearing is that it is hard to retain people,' said Ow Fook Chuen, Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority deputy chief executive (operations and policy).
'The quality of the people carrying out the audit is important because they affect the quality of the process,' he said.
Public accountants in Singapore have to sign off audit reports with their opinion that the accounts present a 'true and fair' view of the state of the company.
'For us as the regulator, our concern is ensuring audit quality,' Mr Ow said, adding the standards of audit reports are not in question currently.
'If the resource issue becomes a concern to affect the audit, we need to assess the situation and we are working with the profession in this area,' he said.
