Q: Big4 - Yearly salary increment

lol seeing auditors drool over 3 months bonus is pathetic...

this the exact reason why this industry deserve to be sweatshop-like and there will still be people flooding in like is the best job in the world

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Its normal? Always 2months plus to 3.

for all ranks?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I think there’s sabbatical leave for kpmg.

No more. Was in similar shoes as OP and I wasn't allowed to take any, not even unpaid leave.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

for all ranks?

Heard it’s 2 months on avg for seniors
For associates it’s 1.5 months

Blue

Originally Posted by Unregistered

lol seeing auditors drool over 3 months bonus is pathetic...

this the exact reason why this industry deserve to be sweatshop-like and there will still be people flooding in like is the best job in the world

Which companies have >3 months bonus? Don't tell me IB, they work worse hours than auditors.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Which companies have >3 months bonus? Don't tell me IB, they work worse hours than auditors.

you are the auditor. you tell me. you never do payroll before? there are many that pay more than 3 months with or without aws…

not sure which backwater industries or clients you are auditing, but i’ve seen a range of 2 - 14 months for my clients. and this is baseline bonus before the performance component. all of them have better working hours that auditors so your argument is moot.

not saying that all companies are like that, there are also a great many that pay crap bonus… but to broadly say that most don’t have 3 months bonus is just myopic and shows lack of experience..

Originally Posted by DecorumEDMW

On behalf of Gen Z as well

1. Need work and study in own free time

1.1 Salary relating to the Profession should be very similar or more compared to law and medicine since its a qualification program.

1.2 Being a competitive industry, CA SG should tie up with MBA to offer an fast track MBA pathway so people can get both CA SG and fast track MBA.

2. The designation is CA SG which is same as those who have grandfathered. The old ones should have kept the CPA SG title in order to do the differentiation so the title for those who have done SCAQ is stronger

3. ATO concept very troublesome. Tough to resign in case of toxic firms (there are quite a number of toxic workplaces). Candidates should be allowed to transfer as many times as they need instead of being encouraged to stay

4. Alot of modules for local uni grads are repeated but its good that they finally realised, thus the exemptions

5. Candidates who take SCAQ should be explicitly banned from over time in order to facilitate WLB

1.1 as a CA, i dont even know how you consider this comparable, when the hours and barrier to entry to become a doctor or lawyer is significantly higher and skill set more complex.

1.2 not sure why this is relevant, im pretty sure if you have cleared some components of an MBA program, you are able to exempt it, similar to how poly can exempt some uni courses etc. you are already fast tracked if you have cleared the technical aspects of the MBA. Tie up with which MBA program? Which MBA program want to tie up with you? EY offers free MBA by Hull Univeristy but the take up is close to 0 in singapore.

2. The argument is converse that the old CAs are much better accountants since their cut-off was AAA, while the current batch are BBC and also auto exempt 2 papers. You are essentially watering down the new title. Should they then make all 5 papers mandatory to ensure all CAs are at the appropriate skill level? or when they made the switch to start exempting 2 papers the new batch should then be given CA (Exempt) title while those that took 5 should be full CA.

3. So you talk about reputation, but if your professional accreditation is signed off by a hawker who just so happens to be an accountant is that still relevant? Audit is a set of guardrails so that capital markets dont go haywire and report whatever they want, you can argue its useless, but im sure many rather pay for that useless sign off for some level of comfort than not. Same as ATO concept, no guardrails the next batch of ATOs will be irrelevant

4. once again watering down the qualification, honestly if you scraped by uni C- in financial reporting mods why should you be exempted? a lot of new batch cant even get their journal entries correct, they wouldnt pass the FR paper since its significantly much more complex than uni, how many of you can tell me you really know the journal entries for construction POC project (that was my years question), you can say this knowledge is useless to the majority, but the fact is you had to have a baseline foundational understanding of the FRS, because that baseline knowledge will always be able to tell you what a logical set of entries are and you would get some marks either way with this foundation. but now you are by default already exempted, you could know 0 journal entries, graduated from accountancy and got a CA.

5. just lol, so doctors and lawyers also?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

1.1 as a CA, i dont even know how you consider this comparable, when the hours and barrier to entry to become a doctor or lawyer is significantly higher and skill set more complex.

1.2 not sure why this is relevant, im pretty sure if you have cleared some components of an MBA program, you are able to exempt it, similar to how poly can exempt some uni courses etc. you are already fast tracked if you have cleared the technical aspects of the MBA. Tie up with which MBA program? Which MBA program want to tie up with you? EY offers free MBA by Hull Univeristy but the take up is close to 0 in singapore.

2. The argument is converse that the old CAs are much better accountants since their cut-off was AAA, while the current batch are BBC and also auto exempt 2 papers. You are essentially watering down the new title. Should they then make all 5 papers mandatory to ensure all CAs are at the appropriate skill level? or when they made the switch to start exempting 2 papers the new batch should then be given CA (Exempt) title while those that took 5 should be full CA.

3. So you talk about reputation, but if your professional accreditation is signed off by a hawker who just so happens to be an accountant is that still relevant? Audit is a set of guardrails so that capital markets dont go haywire and report whatever they want, you can argue its useless, but im sure many rather pay for that useless sign off for some level of comfort than not. Same as ATO concept, no guardrails the next batch of ATOs will be irrelevant

4. once again watering down the qualification, honestly if you scraped by uni C- in financial reporting mods why should you be exempted? a lot of new batch cant even get their journal entries correct, they wouldnt pass the FR paper since its significantly much more complex than uni, how many of you can tell me you really know the journal entries for construction POC project (that was my years question), you can say this knowledge is useless to the majority, but the fact is you had to have a baseline foundational understanding of the FRS, because that baseline knowledge will always be able to tell you what a logical set of entries are and you would get some marks either way with this foundation. but now you are by default already exempted, you could know 0 journal entries, graduated from accountancy and got a CA.

5. just lol, so doctors and lawyers also?

1.1 You have to consider the final scope of work done by us

With this qualification program, you are expected to be either a CFO or a Public Accountant as career goal

Some even become CEO of big firms

Accountant skillset requirement not high enough meh? Every CA have to know and be able to deal with every single business matter, risk, handling audit with auditors, gst, tax

1.2. ISCA tie up with NUS/NTU/SMU MBA to give an advanced standing for purpose of earlier graduation

2. 1961 to 1969 SP Diploma Accountancy graduates can be qualified as CA also so we can go beyond that AAA period etc if you want to.

Also, exam papers last time were much easier.
CPA SG for those who have grandfathered is reasonable as they did not do SCAQ.

From marketing perspective, its like Rolex vs in-house proprietary Tudor watch. We are trying to sell the CA Program end product as Tudor when the actual product of the SCAQ is a Rolex to do the differentiation marketing

3. This particular ATO ruling doesnt work for 2 reasons

3.1. It requires a candidate to not be able to switch ATO more than 2 times. It will create a mentality in candidates that they should not anyhow switch ATO as they have a limit on switching ATO unless the work conditions are really lousy

3.2. If you switch ATO, you can get a more varied exposure so it can be better too

3.3. ATO, knowing that they have an active training agreement ongoing for the duration of SCAQ, will not be incentivised to raise their SCAQ employees’ salaries as the SCAQ candidates are bound by an agreement.

This will in turn affect the salaries of our future Chartered Accountants

3.4. This ATO ruling thus serves to benefit the audit partner and finance director/CFO more

3.3. Salaries progression of future Chartered Accountants*

Originally Posted by Unregistered

1.1 as a CA, i dont even know how you consider this comparable, when the hours and barrier to entry to become a doctor or lawyer is significantly higher and skill set more complex.

1.2 not sure why this is relevant, im pretty sure if you have cleared some components of an MBA program, you are able to exempt it, similar to how poly can exempt some uni courses etc. you are already fast tracked if you have cleared the technical aspects of the MBA. Tie up with which MBA program? Which MBA program want to tie up with you? EY offers free MBA by Hull Univeristy but the take up is close to 0 in singapore.

2. The argument is converse that the old CAs are much better accountants since their cut-off was AAA, while the current batch are BBC and also auto exempt 2 papers. You are essentially watering down the new title. Should they then make all 5 papers mandatory to ensure all CAs are at the appropriate skill level? or when they made the switch to start exempting 2 papers the new batch should then be given CA (Exempt) title while those that took 5 should be full CA.

3. So you talk about reputation, but if your professional accreditation is signed off by a hawker who just so happens to be an accountant is that still relevant? Audit is a set of guardrails so that capital markets dont go haywire and report whatever they want, you can argue its useless, but im sure many rather pay for that useless sign off for some level of comfort than not. Same as ATO concept, no guardrails the next batch of ATOs will be irrelevant

4. once again watering down the qualification, honestly if you scraped by uni C- in financial reporting mods why should you be exempted? a lot of new batch cant even get their journal entries correct, they wouldnt pass the FR paper since its significantly much more complex than uni, how many of you can tell me you really know the journal entries for construction POC project (that was my years question), you can say this knowledge is useless to the majority, but the fact is you had to have a baseline foundational understanding of the FRS, because that baseline knowledge will always be able to tell you what a logical set of entries are and you would get some marks either way with this foundation. but now you are by default already exempted, you could know 0 journal entries, graduated from accountancy and got a CA.

5. just lol, so doctors and lawyers also?

4. Nowadays you can google everything to solve all problems

Werent we saying that we can use Chat GPT/AI to solve the issue

If not why are FRS and auditing standards made accessible via internet? Nowadays you can send your financial accounting and auditing problems queries online (NOT CLIENT INFORMATION) via soft copy to people in India and they will solve for you.

Otherwise, we can approach ISCA technical helpdesk

Also, then wouldnt it have been better for the university to do an integrated financial reporting course to cut the time waste?

5. Yes, why not let the law/medicine/accountancy exam candidates be able to be exempted without OT thus to facillitate their studies? Singapore is a highly stressful society and its crazy for our next generation to immediately step into the accounting sector with OT and study requirements