The Advanced Audit and Assurance syllabus is essentially divided into six areas.
The syllabus starts with the legal and regulatory environment including money laundering, and procedures in practice management, including quality control and the acceptance and retention of professional engagements.
This then leads into professional and ethical considerations, including the Code of Ethics and professional liability. The syllabus then covers various assignments, including an audit of financial statements, auditrelated services, and other assurance assignments, as well as the reporting of these assignments.
The final section covers current issues and developments relating to the provision of auditrelated and assurance services.
Course Content
- Regulatory environment
- Professional and ethical considerations
- Practice Management
- Assignments
- Reporting
- Current issues and development
- Teacher: Imran Hosein
This syllabus develops upon the core financial management knowledge and skills covered in the F9, Financial Management, syllabus at the Fundamentals level and prepares candidates to advise management and/or clients on complex strategic financial management issues facing an organisation.
The syllabus starts by exploring the role and responsibility of a senior executive or advisor in meeting competing needs of stakeholders.
The syllabus then re-examines investment and financing decisions, with the emphasis moving towards the strategic consequences of making such decisions in a domestic, as well as international, context. Candidates are then expected to develop further advisory skills in planning strategic acquisitions and mergers and corporate re-organisations.
The next part of the syllabus covers the role of a treasury function in large complex corporate structures. It re-examines, in the broadest sense, the existence of risk in business and the sophisticated strategies which are employed in order to manage such risks. This is a build-up on what candidates would have covered in the F9, Financial Management, syllabus and the P1, Professional Accountant, syllabus.
The syllabus finishes by examining the impact of the economic environment on multinationals and the impact of emerging issues in finance.
Course Content
- Role and responsibility towards stakeholders
- Advanced investment appraisal
- Acquisitions and mergers
- Corporate reconstruction and re-organisation
- Treasury and advanced risk management techniques
- Economic environment for multinationals
- Emerging issues in finance and financial management
- Teacher: Karmalain P. Manohar
The syllabus for Paper P3, Business Analysis, is primarily concerned with two issues.
The first is the external forces (the behaviour of customers, the initiatives of competitors, the emergence of new laws and regulations) that shape the environment of an organisation. The second is the internal ambitions and concerns (desire for growth, the design of processes, the quality of products and services, the competences of employees, the financial resources) that exist within an organisation.
This syllabus looks at both of these perspectives, from assessing strategic position and choice to identifying and formulating strategic action and its formulation. It identifies opportunities for beneficial change that involve people, finance and information technology. It examines how these opportunities may be implemented through the appropriate management of programmes and projects.
The syllabus begins with the assessment of strategic position and is concerned with the impact of the external environment, its internal capabilities and expectations and how the organisation positions itself. It examines how factors such as culture, leadership and stakeholder expectations shape organisational purpose.
Strategic choice is concerned with decisions which have to be made about an organisation’s future and the way in which it can respond to the influences and pressures identified in the assessment of its strategic position.
Strategic action concerns the implementation of strategic choices and the transformation of these choices into organisational action. Such action takes place in day-to-day processes and organisational relationships and these processes and relationships need to be managed in line with the intended strategy, involving the effective coordination of information technology, people, finance and other business resources.
Companies that undertake successful business process redesign claim significant organisational improvements. This simply reflects the fact that many existing processes are less efficient than they could be and that new technology makes it possible to design more efficient processes.
For some writers, quality issues are at the heart of process improvement and the continual emergence of models and concepts that focus on quality improvement merits its inclusion in this syllabus. Strategic planning and strategy implementation has to be subject to financial benchmarks.
Financial analysis explicitly recognises this, reminding candidates of the importance of focusing on the key ratios and measures that may be used to assess the viability of a strategy and to monitor and measure its success.
Throughout, the syllabus recognises that successful strategic planning and implementation requires the effective recruitment, training, motivation and organisation of people.
Course Content
- Strategic position
- Strategic choices
- Strategic action
- Business process change
- Information technology
- Quality issues
- Project management
- Financial analysis
- People
- Teacher: Imran Hosein
The Audit and Assurance syllabus is essentially divided into seven areas. The syllabus starts with the nature, purpose and scope of assurance engagements, including the statutory audit, its regulatory environment, and introduces professional ethics relating to audit and assurance.
It then leads into internal audit, including the scope of internal audit as well as the differences between internal audit and external audit. The syllabus then covers a range of areas relating to an audit of financial statements.
These include planning and risk assessment, evaluating internal controls, audit evidence, and a review of the financial statements.
The final section then deals with reporting, including statutory audit reports, management reports, and internal audit reports.
Course Content
- Audit framework and regulation
- Internal audit
- Planning and risk assessment
- Internal control
- Audit evidence
- Review
- Reporting
- Teacher: Imran Hosein
Professional Accountant, acts as the gateway syllabus into the professional level. It sets the other Essentials and Options papers into a wider professional, organisational, and societal context.
The syllabus assumes essential technical skills and knowledge acquired at the Fundamentals level where the core technical capabilities will have been acquired, and where ethics, corporate governance, internal audit, control, and risk will have been introduced in a subject-specific context.
The PA syllabus begins by examining the whole area of governance within organisations in the broad context of the agency relationship. This aspect of the syllabus focuses on the respective roles and responsibilities of directors and officers to organisational stakeholders and of accounting and auditing as support and control functions.
The syllabus then explores internal review, control, and feedback to implement and support effective governance, including compliance issues related to decision-making and decision-support functions.
The syllabus also examines the whole area of identifying, assessing, and controlling risk as a key aspect of responsible management.
Finally, the syllabus covers personal and professional ethics, ethical frameworks – and professional values – as applied in the context of the accountant’s duties and as a guide to appropriate professional behaviour and conduct in a variety of situations.
Course Content
- Governance and responsibility
- Internal control and review
- Identifying and assessing risk
- Controlling risk
- Professional values and ethics
- Teacher: Imran Hosein
This syllabus gives as an introduction to business structure and purpose, and to accountancy as a central business function.
The syllabus commences with an examination of the structure and governance of businesses, briefly introducing ethics. It then looks at business in the context of its environment, including economic, legal, and regulatory influences on such aspects as governance, employment, health and safety, data protection and security.
From there, it focuses on accounting, how it originated, how it is organised, its critical importance in business planning and control, and how it affects other business functions. The syllabus then introduces students to the accounting profession and to certain aspects of the regulatory framework as they affect accounting, auditing and governance.
The syllabus also covers accounting, auditing, and internal control as specific business functions and how these should be supported by effective management information systems.
Finally, the syllabus introduces key management and people issues such as individual and team behaviour, leadership, motivation and personal effectiveness.
Course Content
- Business organisation structure, governance and management
- Key environmental influences and constraints on business and accounting
- History and role of accounting in business
- Specific functions of accounting and internal financial control
- Leading and managing individuals and teams
- Recruiting and developing effective employees
- Teacher: Allan Ramsaroop
Financial Accounting introduces the candidate to the fundamentals of financial accounting, explaining its context and purpose with reference to qualitative characteristics of useful financial information and to the fundamental bases of accounting.
The syllabus then concentrates in depth on the basics of the doubleentry system and on recording, processing, and reporting business transactions and events.
The syllabus then covers the use of the trial balance and how to identify and correct errors, and then the preparation of financial statements for incorporated and unincorporated entities.
Course Content
- The context and purpose of financial reporting
- The qualitative characteristics of financial information and the fundatmental bases of accounting
- The use of double-entry and accounting systems
- Recording transactions and events
- Preparing a trial balance
- Preparing basic financial statements
- Teacher: Yugesh Kumar-Rudra