Needed, an addition in CAs

Number crunching might be a tedious task with balance sheets of companies spilling at their seams, but an acute shortage of financial professionals is making the task even more burdensome for firms.

The shortage of qualified finance professionals is becoming ummanagable due to limited availability and growing attrition, KPMG Head of Risk Advisory Service Pradip Kanakia said in New Delhi recently.

With double-digit growth in the services sector, need for finance professionals is getting amplified and demand is outpacing the supply.

According to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, there are about 1.35 lakh practising CAs in the country currently, but there is still a shortage of about 40,000.

However, ICAI President T.N. Manoharan said the number was likely to increase as the institute had carried out several steps to popularise the course.

The institute has proposed to increase the number of students to be trained under a qualified CA to seven and is likely to get approval from the Ministry of Company Affairs shortly in this regard, he said.

Manoharan said with the introduction of a new CA curriculum, the inflow has increased substantially and completion period has been reduced by almost one-and-a-half years.

With such proactive steps, the number of practising CA are expected to double to 2.5 lakh by 2012, he added.

However, the profile of the finance professional is also changing, which poses another challenge before the industry, a recently released KPMG survey said.

The new hires are expected to possess different capabilities focussing on softer skills such as communication, relationship management, change management and ability to work in teams, the KPMG survey showed.

They are also required to have more sophisticated analytical techniques and to be creative problem solvers.

More than half (55 per cent) of the companies in the survey said they planned to recruit new finance employees in the next two years, but 47 per cent also said this was one the biggest obstacles for transforming their organisations, saying there was difficulty in retaining and finding skilled finance professionals.

Especially, with the introduction of new regulatory compliance norms, like Clause 49 and Sarbanes-Oxley, and stricter accounting standards, the need for financial professionals has gone up even further.

Today's overstretched finance organisations are finding themselves competing for talent, the survey said. — PTI