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Ian Waters, Head of Standards at ACCA says,
‘The tone of the HM Treasury consultation is somewhat different to that of the draft sourcebook published by the FCA in its guidance consultation. Therefore, the future role of OPBAS is unclear, and the anticipated costs of running OPBAS (estimated by the FCA at around £2m per annum) appear excessive.
Although vague, the proposals would appear to lack any regard to proportionality. Professional bodies will be required to meet the running costs of OPBAS, as well as the additional costs of their interactions with OPBAS. These costs must ultimately be borne by supervised firms, which are also likely to suffer additional compliance costs.’
Ian Waters continues,
‘It is a particular concern that OPBAS oversight is restricted to the professional bodies, and so HMRC, as the default AML supervisor for accountants, will not be subject to oversight.
‘As the costs of AML supervision are passed on to members of professional body supervisors (PBSs), a number of professional accountants (especially sole practitioners) may start to question the increasing cost of being supervised for AML by a professional body.
While ACCA members recognise the benefits of being regarded as members of a trusted profession, inevitably, some accountants may choose to give up their professional body membership, and so fall to be supervised by HMRC (or, worse still, seek to avoid supervision). The inevitable outcome is that fewer practising accountants will be subject to regulation, or even to suitably robust AML supervision.
‘This would be seriously detrimental to the public interest in two fundamental respects: apart from the lack of regulation in practice (and the client protection that goes with it, such as professional indemnity insurance and compliance with a code of ethics), there is a risk that those accountants that are supervised by HMRC will be mistakenly thought to be regulated. This will further to the confusion that already exists when a member of the public requires the services of an accountant.’