The regulations long awaited by the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) were tabled in the House of Assembly yesterday, introducing an independent disciplinary process, a form of peer review in the accounting sector called "practice monitoring" and bringing The Bahamas in line with its obligations under the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC).
BICA President Darnell Osborne hailed the regulations as "a proud day for The Bahamas". She pointed out that the absence of these regulations had been a blight on The Bahamas' reputation with the international community.
"The key thing that the international bodies were looking for with the regulations is the practice monitoring, meaning peer review -- auditors auditing auditors, creating checks and balances for the auditors and protecting the public interest," she said.
"The other key thing ... was the absence of an independent discipline and investigation process, and that was one of the major changes in the regulations. We have a separate discipline regulation and the key change in that is that we have independent investigations and discipline committees," she added.
Osborn noted that she had signed off on the regulations about two weeks ago, and said the signing of the regulations by the governor general was the result of several years of hard work by BICA's Legislative Reform Committee and legislative arm of the Office of the Attorney General.
Seperate bills were tabled for general, disciplinary and committee regulations.
General
In addition to provisions for BICA applications and fees, the general regulations set out the public practice requirements for BICA members, plus regulations for monitoring and compliance, continuing professional development and critically, accounting standards and auditing standards in addition to rules of professional conduct.
The regulations mandate the public practice committee to "ensure that the high professional standards of the public accounting profession are maintained." The committee is empowered to establish and administer fitness and competency tests "as it deems appropriate," and to require the cooperation of "any relevant person." The committee is also empowered to issue an order requiring - among other such orders -- that a BICA member upgrade their qualifications.
The regulations create a "practice monitor" -- that is, a person authorized by BICA to monitor the practice of a licensee. Practice monitoring is intended to provide BICA with "reasonable assurance that the practice of a licensee is conducted in accordance with ISA (International Standards on Auditing) standards related to quality controls and other applicable professional standards." The regulations also make every BICA licensee subject to practice monitoring by the Council.
The regulations also make continuing professional development mandatory.
Section 31(1) reads, "To ensure that every member and associate maintains professional competence in his area of practice, he must, per calender year, obtain a minimum of 30 hours of approved continuing professional development (CPD) provided that not less than 20 of those hours are obtained from annual sponsored courses."
At least 14 of the 30 hours must be verifiable, and every member is required to complete 40 hours -- one hour being 50 minutes -- of CPD in their area of specialty every 36 months, the regulations mandate.
The regulations adopt international standards for accounting and auditing, and through the regulations, BICA "adopts the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants Code of Ethics as its rules of professional conduct."
Disciplinary
The disciplinary regulations institute provisions for professional misconduct, and the conduct of the disciplinary process for professionals in the industry. They apply to anyone guilty of professional misconduct under Section 19 of the BICA Act 2015. The key aspect of these regulations is the creation of the independent disciplinary committee and the investigations committee.
Osborn reported that those committees have already been created, and that the investigation committee is chaired by Gerald Sawyer with Kirby Ferguson as deputy chair. The discipline committee is chaired by Ronald Atkinson, with BICA founding member Clifford Culmer as deputy chair.
"So we anticipate a robust investigations and discipline process. It's outside of the council: the sitting council has no direct involvement in any of the discipline proceedings. Everything is referred to the outside committees, and then they report to the council with their decision. That is something that the international bodies will be very happy to know. It should bode well in the future," Osborn added.
Committee
The committee regulations empower the BICA council to delegate powers to committees, and sets out the ways in which those committees are to regulate their proceedings. Osborn told Guardian Business a set of regulations for the practice monitoring process is in the works.
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