Fantastic one, I think credibly difficult challenging, but also, in many regards, rewarding and productive 18 months. The last, you know, the last period has been COVID has, has really tested businesses and business models, governments and economies. And actually, the profession has been at the core of helping businesses through that period. It's really interesting. Now we're getting to that next stage of our post pandemic, rebuilding and resilience. So, enough for me, I want to come to our panellists now, because you know, there have been such a fantastic group of people. And I'd like to welcome you all now to the session and ask them really just to give us their thoughts about, about responding to that data and responding to some of the kind of key findings, and also but also giving their thoughts about the scale of of both the last 18 months and the issues facing the companies within their respective regions. And what's now what's now important for accountants to focus on. So a free minute, I'm going to start with you. That's okay. Let's just start with the survey. You know, these are strong results, you know, how happy are you really with where the industry is placed at the moment? And and what can you tell us about what's happened in the last 18 months and South Africa particularly?
01:23
Thanks, then, for that question, I am satisfied with the results. I will not use the word happy necessarily, because there's always risks with these types of issues. So apart I'm satisfied with the results, we have shown improvement in South Africa, from 2019. When we lost it, the 2018 only lasted study, Chartered Accountants as well as the professional body, which is like showing signs of being trusted by business decision makers. The source of my apprehension to some degree around the risks that we still face is captured by one of the British journalists, Richard Brooks, in his book, bean counters, where he says I may not necessarily agree with him in this conclusion. But he says as the world stumbles from one crisis to the next, its economy precarious, and its core financial markets inadequate, inadequate ly reformed, it won't be the accountants who will pay the price of their failure to hold capitalism to account, it will once again be the millions who lose their jobs and their livelihoods. And while one sequel citizen the profession may feel that the profession is unjustly, being given negative attention, it's important that we heed these calls from our stakeholders, and look at how we hold our members accountable. And this is the area that I think brings about this quote from Richard Brooks. So holding our members accountable is critical. So dealing with the issues of discipline, being transparent with what we do in the profession is absolutely critical. And we've been trying to do that as a cycle in the last in the last 234 years. And the important thing around transparency is not just providing information, but also creating a platform that enables our members to participate in some of the initiatives that we drive. And I will talk about some of those initiatives, when I talk about the next principle that it has been important for us in driving this rebuilding of trust, and that is relevance. And this relevance is anchored on a number of things. The first one is that business is getting more and more complex because of with the with the disruptions that are caused as a result of technological advancements, with the threats that posed by the environmental issues. So it is important that accountants are enabled to keep up to date with these issues and are able to respond appropriately. And psycho we've been trying to get our members participating and getting involved in this area. The second piece around relevance is about the point that Pinarayi talked to around our members of the profession participating in the discussions that are of public interest, helping society in those areas where our skills can be put to good use during the COVID pandemic in South Africa. We establish what we call the business image serviced you. And we were basically helping businesses to three, think about some of their models. Understand the issues of cash flows in as far as small businesses are concerned, but find ways in which they can respond to the COVID pandemic. Investors obviously needed to know what was happening with the investments, we also played a very, very critical role with regulators to ensure that the information that is provided by our members is credible, and it enables businesses to take the decisions that they need to take, given the challenges that they were facing. So often importance around these things is that our members continue to have that level of competence that is required for them to do this, to do these jobs. And, of course,
05:53
in the engagement around the public and public interest issues, it's not about being critical only, and raising issues where you feel government falls short. But it's also about understanding what are the issues that lead to some of the challenges with what a project in South Africa that we call unite forms and see where we do research and understand the corporate failures, understand the failures in government, there's been issues around state capture here, but to understand the sources of these issues, and what policy initiatives are necessary for government to introduce so that we can avoid these occurring in the future. And in these initiatives, not only to involve our members, but also we bring other members of society to work alongside our members. And the reason for that is because the of the attention that the provision is received as a result of these corporate failures, we believe that it's important for the whole ecosystem, in the business, space, the reporting and all of the other governance. People that are involved in governance issues. Because when a corporate failure happens, an auditor comes right at the end, the accountant who provides the accountability report is not necessarily the person who makes the decisions. So when these corporate failures happen, they are indication that the whole corporate governance landscape is not functioning as it should be. But the attention tends to be given to accountants in terms of what happened. And our involving a broader society in these conversations is intended to ensure that not all focus is not only given to accountants, because you're gonna solve the problem by only focusing on one stakeholder when in fact, the source of the problem is much wider than that stakeholder. So this has been the initiatives in the last few few months, we've had an unfortunate incident in July of violence, which basically resulted in a number of businesses being burnt down. So we mobilised our members to get involved, again, in ensuring that people can have the information ready for the authorities. And as far as the Inland Revenue services, he is concerned, because they needed to provide records and do their tax returns. So our members were very, very involved, but also to re start their businesses claim from insurances and all of those things, we made sure that our members participate in helping small businesses as well as big businesses, to regroup and ensure that their business can operate again. So all of these initiatives are initiatives that we have undertaken in order to make sure that we place our members at the forefront of contributing positively to society, but also, in the process, rebuild that confidence in our members. And we are confident that some of the results are an indication of some of those efforts. Thank you.
09:10
Freeman, you've given us so much to think about that. I mean, we've got actually a great number of our audience, actually from South Africa. And just before I move on, just I mean, just to give us a sense of you've been in the role now any for any for a couple of years, but how far down? How far down the track. Do you think you are you happy with your progress? And do you think there's much more to be done in terms of your role in rebuilding the trust within the South African profession?
09:39
Yeah. Look, I'm, like I said, I'm satisfied with the progress. But I think there's still a lot of work to be done in the area of discipline for us that's holding our members accountable. This is one of the reasons why people have not been trusting I mean, we have the Code of Professional Conduct where our members are supposed to We abide by we know, our members are people who are honest to act with integrity. People who avoid conflict of interest, people who prepare themselves quite extensively for the assignments they're gonna do and make sure that they do those assignments with absolute level of diligence, who respect confidentiality, to obey the laws, and all of those things. And yet, when things go wrong, people begin to doubt. And the reason they doubt is because we take long to hold our members accountable. And we've done quite a lot of work in this area to try and speed that process up. But there's a lot of work yet still to be done. And retributive measures by nature are very, very slow. And the the relationship between the offence committed and the action taken as a as a sanction tends to be so far apart, that people don't make the connection that easily and our effort, there's still a role for therefore, that we need to do to make sure that these processes are quick. And and they did with the PIP that needs to be gathered for you as they are in terms of the numbers, if we demonstrate that we hold them accountable, I think will begin to be trusted even more in terms of the code that we uphold.
11:27
Yeah, yeah. Well, I've heard similar things in this country too. So but really, thank you so much for those initial thoughts.
Hi, I'm Carolyn, I will come to you next I mean, slightly different position in the professions in in Australia, although within the financial services sector, obviously, having had similar scrutiny and other aspects that take us through your, you know, obviously, we've heard a great position from Penn, take us through your kind of key takeaways from that, and where you think the profession is positioned at the moment in Australia and the region that you that you're so familiar with.
I actually started by just acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet today, which for me, are the one will people of the Eora Nation and I pay my respects to elder's past, present and emerging? I'd be very disappointed if the results weren't as pleasing as they are, given that profession has had a long standing commitment to ethical leadership. And I'm glad that you know when the results have come out, as they are, but as you mentioned, and the Australian financial services industry has been very challenged, just pre pre pandemic, and in fact, had a major Royal Commission into the operation of financial services, which not only led to a lot of regulatory change and regulatory scrutiny, rightly so. But also in some big changes in governance. And the Chad accountings has a big role to play there as well. I think, in terms of, of what we've achieved, with with the OIC, the provisions definitely stepped up. And as we've sort of mentioned, we're really looked to the accountants, I guess, to look after the businesses in the same way that the, you know, the medical profession was stepping up in looking after our well being. And that really required a lot of handholding analysis, definitely understandable the government support and in some ways, just being there for the businesses as they navigated through the pandemic. And I'm pleased that we're sort of coming out the end of it now. Although we'll, it'll always be a very different world than it was when we went into it. Just in relation to your question of where the role we're gonna play in the future, I think there's a lot of themes where the accounting profession will have a major, major part to play. And if I just think about sort of the, you know, top five or six, definitely the impact of emerging technologies, and how that's shaping society and particular job markets. So what will be the jobs of the future? What would an accountant's job look like? And you mentioned algorithms, and I definitely think there'll be a job called, or if you're right algorithms or algorithm assurance or something like that. And then just focusing on technologies, obviously, the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence and what that'll mean. And it will be about understanding all the potential things that can go wrong, as well as the valuable things and business models that will go right. ESG is a huge one, we've got a role to play in all aspects of the ESA Ng, as I mentioned, so there is a lot of regulatory scrutiny and ethical considerations, and I think our profession has a big role to play there. Cybersecurity is another one. And you mentioned, the business that I was previously involved in. And one of the insights was that accountants actually have a very large skills match with cybersecurity analysts, so I can see a pathway to building capabilities in cybersecurity coming from our profession. And finally, it's all about data data governance, and I think we're better positioned than than anyone else. So we are better positioned than anyone else, to certainly, you know, manage data and govern data in all businesses, because that's really essentially what they're doing. And there's been countered since the dawn of time. So don't think there's anyone better positioned than the accounting profession to do that. And to sort of contribute to all those aspects. I mean, trust is critical to that, because we're not going to be seen as the guest, the leader in any of those areas, if we don't have that underlying position of trust.
03:58
Absolutely, yeah. That's the, I mean, asked about well, you know, again, I think parents presentation really put data integrity and data governance throughout the top of a lot of other measures that people are expecting from the profession going forward. And what's just, I mean, I think we'll come to I think, shortly, but just take take us through the last 18 months from from a from an Australian perspective. I mean, what's it been like down there going through this incredibly insane period where on one hand, actually, last year, he was producing PPE or you know, or pharmaceutical, SEO or even just food you are doing incredibly well, but same time, you know, dealing with the supply, demand dynamics, where sort of stuff was a progression, did it come through? Okay, did it did it sort of emerge with it sort of more trust and it kind of went into the pandemic, do you think?
04:52
Yeah, I think you'd I definitely did. So I'd say the biggest people that have suffered the most with small businesses in Australia, certainly The larger businesses were able to adapt, they certainly had the technologies to get their stuff online, and they continued operating. But if you're a small business, particularly in hospitality, retail, anything like that you really struggled. And I think the accountants had a role to play in making sure those businesses to the extent that they could survived. And the last meeting that's really been about business survival, the government stepped up with the the government support for both employees as well as businesses. And if you would have seen probably some press where big businesses, mainly retailers actually went gangbusters when they weren't expected to, and also got the benefit of government support, there was a big push for them to particularly the listed ones for them to give that support back. And a few of them didn't, a few of them didn't. But certainly the government's support, and the stimulus packages helped us get through this period. And we're obviously lucky that we are in Ireland. from a health perspective, that was all very well managed. We did have deaths, but nothing of the scale that we've seen globally. And we cope with the lockdown pretty well. Unfortunately, there's been no international travel coming in or out. So that's opening up now, which is great. So supply chain has been a bit of a bit of a bit of a challenge. But I think, you know, as if you look globally, I think we've come out pretty well. And now it's just about getting those businesses back up and running. Employment shortages is a big challenge, particularly in those businesses that was was shut down and where they rely on immigration to keep them going. And one of those areas is actually auditing and the the CIA's had managed to get a visa exemption to allow auditors to come to Australia as one of the first intake of employees from overseas when the country opened up. So that was a big, a big help to that industry as well. So I'd say we can out pretty well. But what remains to be seen is how we now you know, sort of head into the new future.
06:59
Yeah, yeah. And that's so yeah, that's fascinating. I was I saw the scenes in the the airports in Australia the last week or so it's incredible. See the families reunited. So Love Actually yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Carolyn.