EDUCATION

ACCA announces significant rise in students

ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has announced a significant rise in new student numbers and online service customer satisfaction at the end of its 2011/12 operating year.

Total increase in membership in 2011-12 has been 7,000 (4.8%) while over 70,000 new students started studying for the ACCA Qualification.

ACCA now has 154,000 members and 432,000 students in 170 countries. Sustained investment in customer service over the past 12 months has seen customer service targets reached and online customer experience improved.

In addition, ACCA has seen a significant rise in satisfaction with the public value created through its global policy positions and activities.

Helen Brand, ACCA's chief executive, comments: "ACCA's results show that we continue to deliver towards our goal to be the leading global professional accountancy body in reputation, influence and size.

We've seen strong demand for the ACCA Qualification, with significant growth in established markets - such as China, Singapore, Malaysia, the Caribbean and the UK - and in new markets too.

"We've taken significant steps forward in our quality of customer service. Our members and students are now starting to see the benefits of investments made in recent years to improve our processes, IT infrastructure and customer service levels.

Helen Brand said, "This is a good outcome. We know we need to go further to improve satisfaction ratings even more and have plans to increase our performance around service delivery, including the website.

I remain committed to ensuring that we provide a good and consistent standard of customer service and to innovating what we do to ensure we continue to meet the needs of employers.

"I am particularly pleased to see that we are enhancing our global reputation through our policy and technical work.

ACCA's Council is clear that we must demonstrate public value in all that we do.

We have outperformed our target in relation to employers believing that our global policy output brings public value.

This reflects the investment we have made in new Global Forums with high-profile membership from many leading organisations around the world, an enhanced research programme on key areas of importance to CFOs and increasing influence with policymakers, regulators and standard setters.