You can reach manager or even senior manager with just ACCA. It has been that way for a long time just that ACCA-only employees have been a small number last time.

SQP is basically to self-pwn new audit employee even harder than before. In any case, you only need a CA ie SQP if you want to sign accounts aka partner, or help people do some certification work (e.g. sign off on some donation statements and etc). Other than that, a CA is procedurally useless even for a CFO.

Audit is not actuarial. You don't need to pass exams to get promoted. SQP or CA is to sign accounts.

Thank you for sharing. This is useful. What about those with degree, is it possible to go beyond seniors? SQP is really useless ;( it make sense to take sqp after u reached manager/sm then? (If you sure you want to try for partner role).

I think part of the season is SG graduates would mostly only join as fresh graduates (A1)

Then as those people leave, it’s very hard to find replacement for them locally.

Generally people wouldn’t move from Commercial role to audit.

Whereas MY graduates are happy to come over and join as mid joiners.

What sort of degree are you referring to? Accounting degree or other fields like economics. I have seen economics graduate (no accounting knowledge) who joined audit and they really struggle in the field. As long you have an accounting degree (SG, MY, AU) or ACCA ie accounting knowledge and you are able to do an ok job in it, you will get promoted to manager and senior manager role. Promotion criteria in audit is very straightforward, but it is just that the working condition is on the crappier side to be very frank.

By ok it means: (1) enough EQ to manage the clients and your seniors/managers, and getting the job done which include a lot of OT and sufficient accounting/audit knowledge. Obviously there are other usual fire fighting which in the worst case you might potentially have no senior or accessible managers in your job (zero guidance) and have to do two audit jobs at one time (double booking).

You should always aim to do SQP early even though it is self-pwn bs. Optically, it looks better when you apply for jobs. It is not important for commercial, but it will sound very stupid to prospective employers if you say you are not pursuing CA (SQP, CPA Australia or others).

If you are a current undergraduate, I will really encourage you to try around a few internships to see if there is something else that you might want to do. Don't need to treat audit as the de facto path for an accounting graduate. It is a possible path, but not the only path.

Add-on to my previous post. Sound like you are already in a Big4.

Yes, you can choose not to take SQP or even fail it repeatedly and you will still get promoted to manager/SM. But you should always aim to take it right from the start (and hopefully pass it since you are already taking it).

Anyone knows if possible to nego for higher base salary in audit big 4 as fresh grad? 3k seems very low to me.

Not possible.

Big4 has fixed salary bands so everyone in your cohort doing the same role gets the same pay range.

+some bonus for higher honors and higher performance rating but it’s not much.

Anyway I think it’s been revised to be a bit higher than 3k in the last year.

Highly unlikely

Fresh grads are starting at the same salary, if one manage to negotiate for a better pay how abt the rest?

At least for yellow (which I’m in) , I know that for salary adjustment on any rank has to go through the head of the service line and report to the MD

Is too much trouble for them if u are just a small fish that can be easily replaced

I don't think you have any bargaining power when they are accepting fricking NUS History and even UOL Clementi branch graduates these days.