Bits & bytes
Dressed to skill
Chartered accountants to get corporate look

A dress code for practising chartered accountants will be out by the end of this month with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India giving finishing touches to the recommendatory proposal to give its professionals a corporate look and don a new brand identity.

“We are in the process of finalising a dress code that will be announced by the end of this month,” ICAI president T.N. Manoharan said in New Delhi recently.

He, however, said the proposal would not be mandatory in nature. “It will be more of a recommendation, though we expect it to be followed by the professionals,” Manoharan said.

Elaborating on the proposal, he said the dress code would not be for day-to-day affairs but for events like business meetings and other official representations and engagements.

Set up under an Act of Parliament, the ICAI is the apex governing body working for regulation and development of the accountancy profession in India.

Manoharan clarified the code would be applicable only to professionals working in individual or partnership capacity.

“Those who are employed with companies are not bound to follow as they will be acting as per the requirements and stipulations of the organisation they work for,” he added.

A formal dress code, he said, could be a full-sleeve shirt, tie and shoes.

The ICAI is also working on the design of a logo that Chartered Accountants could use on their visiting cards, letterheads and other stationery. This follows a similar initiative of the institute where it had allowed its members to prefix the letters ‘CA’ before their names, similar to what doctors do.

The steps are being taken at a time when ICAI is going in for major changes with regard to the development and working of accounting professionals in India.

In another move it has also permitted its members to set up management consultancy firms while retaining their status of being practising CAs, who were so far not allowed to be equity holders in companies.

This has been done keeping in mind the growing role of CAs in management consultancy as well as to help them compete with major consultancy firms who could employ huge capital and human resource, Manoharan said. PTI