As technology reshapes the way businesses operate on a daily basis, the 100-year old Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) is now focussed on ensuring that its prestigious Certified Management Accountants (CMA) programme equips its members to remain relevant and upskill them to be future ready, a top official said.

This US-headquartered global body — which has over 1.2 lakh members around the world — is now changing its exam pattern/content from January 2020 to put more emphasis on technology and analytical skills and also business ethics, Doreen Remmen, Senior Vice-President, Operations and Chief Financial Officer, IMA told BusinessLine in an interview here.

“We are constantly reviewing our curriculum. We do job analysis every three-to-five years where we look at what are the skills required. In our recent job analysis, technology skills came to the forefront”, she said.

Remmen said that IMA continues to re-evaluate the market to assess the skills that are needed in corporations.

“There are forces that are changing the profession (management accountancy) — technology being the most significant.

What’s happening is that management accountants are being freed from the burden of transaction processing and we now have opportunities to use our skill sets to really support creating wealth, building the economy and building companies. Technology is the primary force that is causing this change”, she said.

Bullish on india

IMA, which has been expanding rapidly globally over the last decade, expects India to emerge as its third largest market in a short period of time. Currently, 80 per cent of IMA’s growth is coming from the Asia-Pacific region.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has referred to India becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025 and that is going to require lot of professionals. There will be lot of opportunities”, Remmen said.

She said that IMA was excited about the opportunities in India and about the pool of well educated and ambitious population here.

“Our plans are to support people in their careers here in India. Certifications do help people distinguish themselves in very competitive employment environment. We are going to support people by building relationship with Universities. Over the next five years, we hope to have relationships with all of the major universities. We are also building important corporate relationships such as Amazon and Wipro”, she said.

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