Our income last year grew by £6m to £82.4m, but at the same time the result for 2011 includes a number of one-off items notably £2.4m of fines and cost recoveries from the AADB.
We continue to have significant demands on our cash reserves, notably from AADB requirements and pension deficit funding.
With high youth unemployment, declining social mobility, and rising university fees, our Learning & Professional Development department has been building on our work on fair access into the profession.
Last year we launched special school leaver degree schemes which offer work experience and in at least one case, a sponsored degree course. We’ve also looked more closely at apprenticeships and are working with PwC on providing 1,500 Higher Apprenticeships, which will provide non-graduates a route into higher study.
We engaged with other institutes, professional bodies, key think tanks, regulators and governments around the world, and in particular with the Coalition Government in the UK.
Fellow Chartered Accountants, welcome to the ICAEW Annual Review for 2011.
What I'd like to talk about in the next couple of minutes are some of the highlights of the past twelve months.
Economically it's been a very mixed picture for our members throughout the world. If you are in the more mature markets of Europe or North America, growth has been a hard-to-find commodity. Whereas in the emerging markets, growth has continued with only a minor hiccup during the financial crisis of the past three years. And the fortunes of our members, and indeed ICAEW, have very much reflected the underlying economic conditions.
Business Advice Service
I'm particularly proud of the work we did in the UK around the growth agenda, the Business Advice Service. In September 2011 we went to our member firms and asked them whether they would be willing to give a consultation free of charge to businesses that had particular issues that Chartered Accountants might be able to help them with. We had no idea whether this would get a favourable response from the membership.
We were pleasantly surprised - and I say that with understatement - by over 3,000 ICAEW offices in the UK wanting to participate in this particular scheme. What we have, six months into this scheme, is a large number of very satisfied businesses who have created a new relationship with Chartered Accountants, and we have a lot of Chartered Accountancy practices who have seen some new clients.
In 2012 we want to build on that and see how we can take it to the next stage. So I hope that next year I'll be telling you about the further success of this scheme.
Access to the Profession
Another thing we worked on very actively in 2011 was the issue of access to the profession and helping that key group of 16-24 year olds who are thinking about their careers and wanting to progress them, access the Chartered Accountancy profession.
We've been working with Government to create as many different routes to the profession as possible and we've had some trailblazing schemes put in place with Universities, principally in the UK but we're now looking at extending those models internationally. And we've also launched a number of initiatives around apprenticeships which will be launching in September 2012, and which in many ways are going to make access to the Chartered Accountancy profession even wider than it was before.
Policy Work
The final thing that I wanted to bring to your attention is our work with policy makers, in the UK, Europe and throughout the world. Our policy work takes many different shapes and forms, and the technical work that we do is second to none. In 2011 we responded to over 200 technical and policy consultations around the world.
But we've also been at the very vanguard of thought leadership work, whether that is around the Audit of Banks, how Finance Functions are configured, or indeed very important work around IT and how that's being used within the business community today.
I'd like to thank you for the support that you have given ICAEW in 2011 and in particular the support that we've received from the ICAEW Council, the support that we've had from our staff in actually delivering the strategy, and all the support that we've had from our Active Members who've contributed so effectively to ICAEW's work over the past 12 months. Thank you and we look forward to your continued support in 2012.
