ACCOUNTANCY has shaken off its "grey" image in recent years and continues to be a highly popular career choice.

Salaries commanded by qualified chartered accountants are among the highest in business and their professional skills are much sought after in industry and commerce.

Hardly surprising that in the recent Universum Graduate Survey, UK business students ranked three of the "big four" accountancy firms among their Top 10 favourite employers. Only the BBC pipped PricewaterhouseCoopers for the number one spot.

Adrian Simpson, president of the Southern Society of Chartered Accountants, said: "The boring image of accountants conveyed by the old Monty Python sketch is now 30 years out of date."

Mr Simpson, a partner in accountancy firm Mazars, based in Poole, added: "Today it's far more than a career based on number-crunching and the fact is, the profession continues to attract people of the very highest calibre - year after year."

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW) is Europe's largest professional accountancy body and 3,000 people attain the ICAEW's ACA qualification each year.

The ACA (Associate Chartered Accountant) is widely recognised as the most prestigious professional business qualification in the world.

Nationally, 3,143 ACA trainees entered the profession last year - 84 per cent of them graduates.

Just over half of all graduate entrants had an accountancy or business degree, while science and maths graduates comprised a further 24 per cent.

School-leavers with good A-level results can also train as chartered accountants.

The ICAEW recommends that ACA students should have a UCAS tariff score of at least 220 (equivalent to 18 UCAS points), although some recruiting firms may require a higher score of 280. The majority of students have at least a 2:1 degree.

Then there is the "AAT-to-ACA fast-track" route which enables students to complete the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) qualification and the ACA in four years.

This is an increasingly popular option in these days of mounting student loans.

To qualify as a chartered accountant, ACA students need to pass the ICAEW exams and complete a training contract of between three and five years.

Training usually takes places with a firm of chartered accountants, but some train in banks and other businesses.

Having completed their training contract, newly-qualified chartered accountants will have scope to gain more experience within the firm.

Those who trained with a small or medium-sized practice may decide to move to a big global firm, gaining audit experience of large, multi-national corporations. Another option is to move into a specialist area, such as taxation; corporate recovery and insolvency; forensic accounting and litigation support; technical work or corporate finance.

Opportunities also exist for chartered accountants in the public sector, City organisations and charities, as well as education and training.

Over half of the ICAEW's 126,000 members work in business and industry, with around 80 per cent of FTSE 100 companies having at least one qualified ACA on the board.

As an internationally-recognised qualification, the ACA is a passport to an overseas career and some 15,000 ICAEW members work abroad.

Many chartered accountants secure high-profile positions with leading multi-national organisations. Large firms often offer secondments of up to two years overseas.

Mr Simpson added: "Chartered accountants have more flexibility to change direction or switch their specialist area than most other trained professionals.

"But as in all walks of life, it's important to be focused on what you want to achieve and more importantly, to demonstrate this commitment to prospective employers."

First published: July 23