Message from Your CEO & President

By Colin Bennett and Karen Botham

This fall MBA students at the University of British Columbia , for the first time, will be able to apply to earn their CMA designation concurrently. The opportunity is called a combined CMA/MBA program, and it is one of many alternate channel programs that CMA Canada now offers across the country. Today, in addition to the 18 accredited undergraduate programs, alternate channel programs include the CMA Executive Program and three CMA/MBA programs – two of which are offered at universities right here in BC.

So why do did CMA Canada and its provincial partners decide to develop these alternate channel programs? Don't they take away from the traditional CMA accreditation process? Don't they somehow dilute the value of the CMA designation if everyone doesn't take the identical pathway to certification?

The challenge we faced

Like the world of business, the CMA profession started taking hits in the late 1990s. The demands on companies and business professionals in general were quickly changing in response to growing trends such as globalization, the customer economy, technology and related communications, innovation, and speed and agility. Businesses were demanding more from the CMAs they were hiring.

These organizations were increasingly looking for university graduates with a diverse toolbox of technical, management, and leadership skills. But fewer individuals were writing the CMA National Entrance Exam and fewer individuals were earning the CMA designation. With the growth of globalization, people were beginning to explore a greater range of opportunities for professional development than ever before. This was 1999 and at this time we were facing a nation-wide implementation of the degree requirement for all exam candidates.

We knew one of the reasons we were seeing a decline in membership growth was due to the pending national degree requirement. When we delved deeper into the problem, we realized that the society needed to offer more options, more pathways leading to the CMA designation. Like businesses, we needed to listen to our customers' needs and those needs were providing new entry points into the traditional CMA accreditation process. These new entry points needed to take the candidates' time, professional goals, educational background, and practical experience into greater consideration.

We also knew that, for whatever new entry points we decided to develop, we needed to continue to deliver our tradition of excellence and rigorous standards.

The solution we chose

To avoid the danger of diluting standards, CMA Canada and its provincial partners decided in 1999 that we would target three highly qualified groups of potential candidates:

• individuals with significant senior or executive level experience in strategic financial management;
• top academic achievers from post-secondary institutions offering degrees;
• professional accountants who are not certified members of CMA Canada.

Once the National Board of Directors approved these recommendations in 1999, we began exploring the development of alternate channels to target these specific groups. For the group with substantial prior experience in strategic financial management, we determined that these individuals may qualify for exemption at an advanced level and therefore begin the traditional CMA accreditation process at a different entry point. This realization later became the basis for the CMA Executive Program.

For the top academic achievers group, the National Board of Directors recommended that we package the CMA designation with an MBA. Each CMA/MBA program would entail an alliance between the university and CMA Canada. These CMA/MBA programs could be based on executive MBA programs or on full-term MBA programs. CMA Canada – British Columbia became an early supporter of this approach. Out of the three CMA/MBA programs now available in Canada , two of them are offered at BC universities – an accomplishment that the provincial team worked hard to achieve. These programs are structured to fulfill the MBA curricula as well as course, project, and experience requirements for the CMA designation. See the interview with Mark Chiarello in this issue of Update for more information about CMA/MBA programs.

For the group of professional accountants, we knew that many professionals were specializing in key areas and seeking out designations to demonstrate that expertise. We also knew that today's Canadian professional accountants may work in industry or public practice, in Canada , or anywhere in the world. As a result, CMA Canada pursued mutual recognition agreements with other professional organizations, such as the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants of the United Kingdom (CIMA) and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). Certified members of these organizations can apply for certified membership at CMA Canada and vice versa.

The results we have seen so far

We have come a long way since launching our first alternate channel program in BC in 2000. We learned a lot from these experiences and now routinely solicit feedback from CMA Canada, the post-secondary institutions that deliver the programs on our behalf, members like you, program candidates, and CMA staff. This feedback mechanism is a vital component of our quality management processes; it enables us to deliver on systematic improvements each year.

We close this message to thank our members who have provided us feedback about numerous topics over the past two years. This is Karen's last message as President; her two year term finishes at the end of this September, when Fred Zdan takes over the helm. As always, contact us anytime with any questions or input that you may have. We want to hear from you.

Colin Bennett, CMA, FCMA
Chief Executive Officer
Direct: 604.484.7002 or 1.800.663.9646 extension 7002

Karen Botham, CMA
President
Email: president@cmabc.com

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