CIMA director defends CCAB split

CIMA has defended its withdrawal from membership of the CCAB claiming that its members were paying a "disproportionate” amount of money towards the body.

With a focus on finance professionals in business, CIMA has argued that the audit focus of both the CCAB and the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) left the institute with a disproportionate bill.

Robin Vaughan, CIMA's executive director for governance and professional standards, told AccountingWEB.co.uk: “We are reacting against a decision in which we formed a view, not shared by the other CCAB bodies that the money we were putting into CCAB, including payments to the FRC, was disproportionate and in effect was offering a subsidy to the audit side of the profession.”

Since the news broke last week it has emerged that CIMA's request to bring in an arbitrator to renegotiate on fees was turned down by the other institutes, including the ICAEW, ACCA, ICAS, ICAI and CIPFA.

Vaughan continued: “They didn’t see it like that. We offered to put our case to binding arbitration - they were unwilling to do that and we had to consider whether to go on paying a disproportionate amount of money into the profession. We felt we didn’t want to do that.”

The institutes had set a tariff under a seven-year agreement to provide funds to the CCAB and the FRC.

While CIMA has withdrawn its support from the CCAB, CIMA will not cease to be regulated by the FRC and will continue to make payments to the regulator.

Vaughan was clear on CIMA’s intention to continue dealing directly with the FRC: “We have no intention of embarrassing the FRC in any way and we intend to stay strongly in support of it.”

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