CPDStore

Sep 13, 10:00

Practice Assurance Monitoring 2023

Speaker: Edward Rands - ECR Professional Ltd

Under the ICAEW Practice Assurance Scheme, ICAEW members and firms are required to comply with four principles-based quality assurance standards. Every year, the ICAEW’s Quality Assurance Department (QAD) publishes a report setting out the findings of its Practice Assurance monitoring activities. This provides valuable guidance on quality- and compliance-related matters, not only for those who have to follow the Practice Assurance requirements, but for all who are involved in the accountancy profession.

During this session Edward Rands will cover the following:

• Overview of the ICAEW Practice Assurance Standards
• QAD’s areas of focus during 2022
• Hints and tips from QAD
• Review outcomes and common findings
• Areas of focus for the 2023 reviews

Attendees at the session will gain insight into current challenges in areas such as anti-money laundering, professional indemnity insurance, handling complaints, and assessing client satisfaction – and how to deal with those challenges.

This session will be of particular interest to all those working in practice.

Course Level: Need to Know

Sep 13, 11:00

The Highlights of SSAS Pensions

Speaker: Terry Dunbar - SSASpro

SSAS pensions have been described as the “Swiss Army Knife” of planning because they have so many features that bring a host of benefits to business owners.

In this session Terry Dunbar from SSASpro will cover four key features that every accountant should be aware of when talking to their business owner clients.

He will cover how a SSAS can help businesses and their owners by:

• Accepting contributions that are far more than an individual’s personal allowance and…. are an allowable expense for corporation tax in the year they are made.
• Buying, holding, or flipping commercial property and reduce tax at every stage of the process.
• Providing a commercially viable source of funding, where interest is paid back to the business owner instead of being diverted to a third party, and all without the multiple hoops and hurdles imposed by traditional lending.
• Creating a family trust which can be used as an effective estate planning tool to reduce IHT and make business continuity simple.
• Building a flexible retirement fund for the business owner to provide financial security for them and their family.

Course level: Intermediate

Sep 13, 12:00

Customer Due Diligence Procedures and the Role of the MLRO

Speaker: Elaine Jackson – OmniPro Practice Support

In this session Elaine Jackson will be focusing on Customer Due Diligence Procedures and the role of the MLRO.

This session is aimed at all Accountants, Auditors, Tax Advisers, Solicitors, Financial Controllers and Company Directors.

Elaine will focus on the following areas during the session:

The Procedures to be undertaken when carrying out;

• Simplified Customer Due Diligence
• Normal Customer Due Diligence
• Enhanced Customer Due Diligence

AND

The MLRO’s role and responsibility in ensuring that the correct procedures are being applied and followed

By attending this session, you will learn when simplified/Normal/Enhanced Customer Due Diligence is required and understand the steps involved with particular focus on the MLRO role and responsibilities.

Course level: Need to know

Sep 13, 13:30

Financial Reporting - Key Issues in 2023

Speaker: Lindsay Webber & Elaine Jackson - OmniPro

In this session we will review a few of the topical areas in financial reporting in 2023. These are areas that we get frequent queries on and that we see errors on in financial statements. We will also take a look at the upcoming changes expected as a result of the periodic review of FRS 102.

Lindsay Webber will cover the following topics during this session:

• FRED 82 – a brief overview of upcoming changes to FRS 102 and FRS 105
• Investment properties
• Fair value and expert reports
• Consolidation reporting exemptions
• Revenue – when is a company acting as an agent?

By attending this session, you will have a better insight to the topical financial reporting requirements.

This session will be of particular interest to preparers of financial statements.

Course Level: Intermediate

Sep 13, 14:30

Accountants Need to Know - "Creditor Duty" Owed by Directors of Struggling Limited Companies

Speaker: David Impey – Company Law Solicitor

Accountants advising limited company clients in financial difficulty need to understand when and how the company law ‘creditor duty’ applies, so their directors must take creditors’ interests into account alongside or instead of those of the company’s shareholders.

Historically, the law in this area has been vague but the Supreme Court has recently provided, for the first time, much greater clarity and practical guidance on the creditor duty – when it is triggered, its content and what directors need to do to comply with it - for directors and their advisors in its ‘momentous’ decision in BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana.

Since then, a further court ruling on the creditor duty has been given in the context of a failed tax planning scheme, in which it was argued that the creditor duty was triggered when HMRC first challenged the scheme, so directors should have considered creditors’ interests from that moment on.

The triggers are insolvency-related, and bring into sharp focus the need for directors (and their advisors) to keep a very close eye on whether their limited company is either balance sheet or cashflow insolvent, and carry out a constant balancing exercise to weigh up how much ‘skin in the game’ the company’s creditors have in each directors’ decision as against the company’s shareholders, in the light of their company’s financial situation and the likelihood of a future insolvency proceedings.

This course will help accountants understand;

• When the creditor duty is triggered
• Who it is owed to
• The content of the duty
• What directors have to do to show they are complying with the duty
• When directors should take legal advice

This course will help accountants help their company clients’ directors to comply with the creditor duty, and when to advise them to take legal advice, to reduce the risk of the directors being found to be in breach of their statutory company law duties.

This session will interest accountants in general practice advising limited company clients, and those working in-house for limited companies.

Course Level: Need to Know

Sep 13, 15:30

Non-Audit Files: Compliance and Best Practice

Speaker: Colm Owens & Lindsay Webber - OmniPro

In this session Colm Owens will focus on the requirements for financial statement compilation agreements. He will discuss what you need to document on your files for these engagements and provide some practical tips on putting these files together to achieve best practice.

• Audit-exempt criteria
• Audit exempt files
• Audit exempt financial statements
• Common errors and omissions.

Course Level: Intermediate