Become 'multirole professionals', CAs told

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, FEB. 18. Indian chartered accountants should keep an open mind in the face of international professionals entering the country, Mr. N. Rangachari, Chairman, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, has said.

He was delivering the concluding remarks at the valedictory session of the 13th State-level conference of the Karnataka State Chartered Accountants' Association here on Sunday. The two-day conference had the theme ``Winning strategies in a changing paradigm''.

Chartered accountants were not the only professionals threatened by this ``international incursion''. If India were to be a part of the international community, this free flow of professionals was to be welcomed by ensuring that its professionals had an equal opportunity abroad, he said.

Financial structures of markets across the world were undergoing tremendous changes, and Indian CAs should equip themselves to take advantage of the situation, Mr. Rangachari said.

Instant availability of information and therefore, the possibility of responding to a situation in real time, was the key driving force behind the changes sweeping international capital markets, he said.

Today, it was a recognised fact that there was a gradual blurring of boundaries between specialisations of financial institutions, Mr. Rangachari said. ``For various reasons, IT included, there was a convergence of fields. Financial institutions no longer restricted themselves to specialising in a particular activity. For example, ``there is no question of separating banking and insurance,'' he said.

The convergence had also led to the formation of monoliths in the form of conglomerates of financial institutions that cut across national and international borders. ``We are headed towards a unipolar world where irrespective of the (different) cultures of the countries in which investments were made,'' mergers and acquisitions were made solely on the basis of short-term interests of transferring costs.

In this new scenario, chartered accountants had to become ``multirole professionals,'' Mr. Rangachari said. The CAs were being called upon to go beyond their brief of acting as statutory auditors.

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