At ACCA Singapore’s Annual Conference 2025, ‘Navigating Permanence in Disruption: The Future of Trade, Talent and Transformation’, industry leaders and policymakers emphasised that accountants and auditors must actively develop their skills and invest in themselves to stay relevant in a dramatically changing global business environment.
‘The key is the mindset, the training,’ said Simon Tay, associate professor and chair of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. ‘I encourage people to keep being good at what you do, so that AI won’t gobble up your lunch.’
Wider lens
According to Tay, sustainability standards serve as essential tools, examining companies through a wider lens. ‘It’s become a top toolkit, a way of assessing companies – how they govern, how they [maintain] their profitability, what the risks are,’ he said.
Professionals must do their part in contributing to sustainability efforts, especially in climate-vulnerable regions of Asia, Tay added: ‘Climate is an existential crisis for Singapore and beyond. We need to do our part.’
Professionals who want to stay relevant need to keep learning and stay curious
Amid geopolitical and trade shifts, professionals should exercise judgement and flexibility when modelling the impact of evolving tariffs, said Ong Woon Pheng FCCA, director at Nexia Singapore. ‘Because of uncertainty, investors and analysts may start to price in unnecessary pessimism. What’s important is to communicate in a timely fashion,’ he explained.
‘Finance professionals must do more than respond to headlines,’ said Aidan Khoo FCCA, director, management consulting at Forvis Mazars. ‘They must adapt to deeper structural shifts as the forces redefining competitiveness are broad and interlinked.’
Sustainability demand
Professionals who want to stay relevant need to keep learning and stay curious about new developments, according to Ayla Majid FCCA, ACCA president at the time of the conference.
‘Treat sustainability information with the same rigour as financial statements’
‘Tools, people and platforms are needed for us to come together to create a more sustainable world,’ said Majid. ‘You have a unique duty to anchor sustainability disclosures and assurances with integrity. Treat sustainability information with the same rigour as financial statements – to be scrutinised, verified and trusted.’
Majid stressed that professionals need to build trust through every facet of their work – from how they handle tasks and analyse data to the credibility they bring to their findings. ‘This is what investors, regulators and societies demand from us,’ she said.
According to Vincent Lim FCCA, CFO at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research, sustainability assurance providers can expect strong job security.
Investors now take a more nuanced look at sustainability metrics when evaluating the medium- and long-term sustainability impacts of corporate financial decisions. ‘We need to have a strong common understanding together between end-users and the gatekeepers of integrity and financial reporting,’ said Jeanne Stampe, lead policy adviser at Norges Bank Investment Management.
To properly assess if companies can meet their growth targets, Stampe said that investors require granular information. ‘The CFOs, the auditors and the assurance providers for climate reports should think about the necessary disaggregation of information, down to the asset level, to help investors do our job,’ she noted.
Professionals also play a key role in giving firms the full picture regarding sustainability risk, said Foo Peng Er, vice president for group sustainability at CapitaLand Investment. ‘You need to deliver a case to your management on why this reporting matters,’ she said. ‘It’s a journey, and the intention is that you need to get everybody in the company with you on the journey.’
Custodians of value
With the current shortage of accounting talent, AI offers a solution to help manage heavy workloads, according to Sarah Foo, head of sales in Asia at Xero. ‘AI can really help businesses be more efficient – to add value to the clients we serve in advisory services,’ she said.
AI will significantly boost accountants’ capabilities, according to Sharifa Nafisa FCCA, managing partner and CEO at Kingsman and Associates. ‘The future accountant isn’t a robot, but they’re humans supercharged by AI,’ she said.
‘The more technology advances, the more human we need to be’
But integrating AI into workflows comes with significant risks. Issues like data poisoning, prompt injection and malicious use raise safety concerns for a profession built on trust, accuracy and reliability.
Jason Tamara Widjaja, executive director of AI at Singapore Tech Centre, said that firms must establish strong AI governance and carefully manage their initiatives. ‘Any model coming into the company, any agent the company builds should go through an assessment process,’ he said.
And success with AI takes more than just surface-level adoption. ‘If you just ask people to use AI on top of their daily work, you will not get most of the value. You need to re-engineer the processes and ways of working,’ he said.
While embracing technological change, the human touch is still paramount, according to Sonia Gupta, managing director for global data and AI transformation at Accenture.
‘The more technology advances, the more human we need to be. With AI you can spend more time understanding what your client needs, so you can truly advise them on what’s coming next.’
Talent pipeline
ACCA Singapore signed two memoranda of understanding (MoU) at the Annual Conference: with the National Trades Union Congress’s Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) and with Junior Achievement (JA) Singapore.
The e2i partnership will focus on improving employability, career advancement and workforce productivity while supporting recruitment in accountancy, tax and related industries.
‘Together, we can help shape jobs and skills so that accountants are well-positioned to leverage their financial expertise with data analytics and innovation,’ said Caryn Lim, CEO at e2i.
Under the second MoU, ACCA and JA Singapore will jointly develop a programme teaching ESG fundamentals to tertiary students, helping them understand how sustainability, ethics and governance influence Singapore’s economic future.
‘By linking ESG to real-world issues and the national agenda, we hope to inspire a generation that leads with purpose, ethics and a deep sense of responsibility to their communities,’ said JA executive director Ng Hau Yee. ‘Young people today are not just future employees – they are future decision-makers.’
