If you don’t know Vincent Sheridan from his work with the ICAI, the chances are you will recognise the incoming President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland from his day job as Chief Executive of the VHI, a post he has held since 2001. Given the demands of that day job, Vincent is understandably apprehensive about the challenges he will face as ICAI President in the coming year but he takes comfort from having a strong executive team under Chief Executive, Pat Costello, at ICAI to fall back on.
“I realise as I get closer to the job what it entails and the amount that my predecessors have contributed in terms of what they have taken on … but I’ve been privileged to come into the job at a very good time. While there are a lot of challenges ahead, as a result of the strategic review that was undertaken we have a clear view of where we are going.”
Born in Dublin, Vincent was a boarder at Blackrock College from the age of 8. After school, he attended University College Dublin where he took a First in the BComm in 1969. He served articles with Reynolds McCarron O’Connor in Fitzwilliam Square and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1972. Married to Aileen, he has four grown up children and is confident of his family’s support in the year ahead.
In terms of priorities for his year as President, Vincent highlights a number of issues: Training in Business for Chartered Accountants, post-qualification education and lifelong learning, the importance of developing a harmonious relationship between the ICAI and the new Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board, and the image and brand of the Chartered Accountant. Having devoted his entire career post-qualification to business, Vincent explains that he never really considered doing anything else.
“My father had died when I was doing articles and we decided to sell the family business. A lot of my contemporaries were going abroad in the 1970s but I decided not to. I wanted to get into business. It was a reasonably good time and my first job, which I intended to stay in for about 18 months, was with Norwich Union on the Life & Pensions side.”
In the event, he was to stay much longer than that. During his time with Norwich Union, he took the investment business back from the UK and ran the financial side of it. He also set up a building society. In his own words: “Every time I thought of leaving something else happened and so I stayed.”
In 1990, Vincent became Norwich Union’s first Group Chief Executive. Ten years later, in 2000, Norwich Union merged with Hibernian as part of an international merger between Commercial Union and Norwich Union and Vincent was appointed Deputy Chief Executive, destined to be Chief Executive after a year. During the course of the first year (2001), however, he was asked to run the VHI and agreed to take on the role. His initial five year contract was renewed for a further three years just last year.
Training in BusinessWith a record number of new students joining ICAI this year, Vincent is confident about future growth at the Institute. “I am hugely encouraged by the numbers. We have over 1,500 new students this year. The growth is incredible. We are fast approaching 16,000 members and membership is likely to continue to grow by about 1000 a year.”
Most Chartered Accountants trained in practising firms. Vincent himself speaks highly of the “tremendous experience” he gained during his time with Reynolds McCarron O’Connor, so he understands why some ICAI members are hesitant about developing training in business as a route to qualification as a Chartered Accountant but he strongly believes in the need to broaden the base of the profession.
“Training in Business is something we have talked about for a long time. We are dedicated to making it happen, but we still have some way to go. That is a major challenge. Part of the problem is that the vast majority of Chartered Accountants have trained in practice and regard that as an excellent training but our profession would be enhanced by having people coming from different backgrounds.”
Lifelong LearningWhether they train in practice or in business, it is widely accepted that Chartered Accountants must continue to develop throughout their professional career. In fact the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland was one of the first accountancy bodies to make Continuing Professional Development compulsory for its members. Today, as Vincent explains, the focus has shifted to the concept of lifelong learning:
“Becoming an accountant is a tremendous training for business but it is not the end goal. We are living in a demanding world that is changing rapidly. The ICAI must do more in terms of post-qualification education. We have to accept that the Finance Director of a public company must be more than a first class accountant. They’re going to have to be experts in corporate finance, in communications, in strategy formulation. ICAI must play an active role in training Chartered Accountants to meet these challenges. We’ve made a good start. In the next few weeks I’m going over to Paris for the launch of our first Insead post-qualification course. I’m excited about this initiative. We’re going to have to do more of this.”
BrandTalk of education inevitably leads on to discussion about the brand of the Chartered Accountant which Vincent says has to be close to the heart of the President of the Institute.
“We can never be complacent about our brand or look to each other for reassurance. We must look towards independent market research and be aware of what the market thinks,” Vincent says.
RegulationPublic perception of the accountancy profession is particularly important in the regulatory area and the setting up of the Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board (CARB) is undoubtedly one of the most interesting developments in the profession in recent times. It is an achievement of which Vincent is proud. The separation of regulation from representation and other ICAI activities, he says, “leaves us free to do what we are good at which is the education and training of our students and members, providing services for members and representing the interests of our members on the increasingly international stage as well as in terms of domestic regulation and legislation.”
“The ICAI has given a lead in this area. It is a sign of confidence and maturity in the profession that as a self-regulatory body we undertake regulation with a huge degree of independence. In fact the CARB has a majority of non-accountants on it. I think that is very positive.”
Membership OrganisationsIt is a particularly demanding time to be Chief Executive of the VHI. I asked Vincent if, from his vantage point, he sees similarities between the VHI and the ICAI.
“They’re both membership based organisations, they both operate in a competitive market place, they are both far and away the market leaders in their sectors, and they share the need for efficiency and innovation … Most ICAI members, whether inside or outside the profession, are working for businesses where profit is the name of the game. While profit is not the driver for member ship organisations, the need for enterprise, innovation and efficiency is no less. I think the ICAI and the VHI are good examples of organisations where those values are very strong. I am convinced that a strong and embedded culture of service to members can be every bit as motivational as the pursuit of profit.”
Social ResponsibilityThe new President’s own regard for social and moral values is very evident when he talks about the privileges and responsibilities of belonging to a profession:
“People of my generation have been extraordinarily privileged. We have lived through an amazing period in the Irish economy. The 1950s was a time of post-war depression. We then had the emergence of hope in the 1960s. In the 1970s we had the beginnings of sustainable economic development where the legacy of Whittaker and Lemass were coming through. Then we had the recession and inflation of the 1980s and we learned the lessons of that period, thankfully, and then we had the amazing emergence of the Celtic Tiger in the 1990s which continues unabated in this century. We are fortunate to have had the opportunity to contribute to the emergence of a strong, independent and confident economy. With that comes responsibility. I think there is a huge responsibility on the professions in Ireland to recognise the privileged position that they have in society and to contribute something back.”
“I am not just talking about accountants, I’m talking about the legal profession, the medical profession, architects, engineers …One of the things that we have to remind ourselves about is that it is far too easy to discharge that debt by reference to members of our own profession. I think professions have a habit of doing that. The problem is that human nature acts in its own self interest so if we seek to discharge a debt that we have to society by reference to other members of our own profession we can be led by self interest … One of the things that continually amazes me is that people justify themselves by reference to their own industry or profession or interest group. The centre of the world for journalists is journalism, for the medical professionals is the medical world, accountants too meet an awful lot of other accountants. You can get a view based on those contacts which isn’t necessarily a balanced view because it tends to have self interest at the heart of it.”
Other issuesBriefly touching on some of the issues currently driving the representational agenda at the ICAI, Vincent mentions in particular the need for legislative reform in the area of auditor liability.
He is supportive of recent progress on statutory recognition for the term ‘accountant’.
In the month that the ICAI moved into new offices in Belfast (of which more in the August issue of Accountancy Ireland), Vincent pays tribute to the premises committees, North and South, who have put in tremendous work over the last while.
“I’m delighted that we have made such great progress with the new
premises. I think that is going to give us a great base from which to work in the future. I think it is fitting for a profession of our size that we should have a landmark building that will provide a home both to our members and to our students.”
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