Standards

The provision of professional services of a high standard is the key behind our growth. Accordingly, we ensure that this quality permeates every facet of our Firm’s practice, especially, in the following areas:-

• Personal service;
• Quality control;
• Cost-effective service:
• Training;
• Industry knowledge;
• Recruitment;
• Professional standards; and
• Confidentiality and secrecy

Personal Service

One of the features that set our Firm apart from other practices is the personal quality of service that we provide to our clients. We minimise the bureaucracy that is so prevalent in other firms where the clients never get to speak to the partners or the qualified senior personnel of those firms. It is our practice that the partners and the qualified senior personnel of our Firm avail themselves on a personal “on-call” basis to our clients. In this manner, the close personal relationship enables qualified, experienced service to be imparted to our clients.

Quality Control

It is our Firm’s policy that all assignments are headed by an experienced partner. He is the person who applies his professional skills and experience on the assignment and makes the necessary decisions to ensure the proper completion of the engagement. He is assisted by a manager and a supervisor and a team of assistants headed by a senior. To ensure the production of work of a high quality, the partner, manager, supervisor and senior are all qualified accountants and professionals who are highly experienced. The managers in the Firm have at least seven years experience and the seniors, a minimum of four. Work is planned and reviewed at every stage by qualified and experienced accountants, with the partner being responsible for the overall review of the whole assignment. Further, on large assignments, it is our policy that the work is reviewed by a second partner. This is to ensure that the work performed has the benefit of the input of at least 2 experienced partners. The process of involving partners at every stage of the work, and not only at the final stages, ensures that the high quality of our work is maintained. This process also enables us to offer constructive and independent ideas to our client. Further, a second partner review ensures that those closest to the engagement do not inadvertently overlook anything and would preserve our standards of professionalism and independence.

Cost Effective Service

Involving partners and qualified accountants at every stage of the work brings to bear their wide experience directly on engagements the Firm performs. By making decisions at every stage keeps work down to a minimum, thus incurring savings for our clients.

Further, we constantly seek more efficient methods of serving our clients without diminishing the quality of our services. In our audit assignments, we employ a SYSTEMS-BASED approach, statistical sampling techniques, etc. to reduce the number of professional hours otherwise required with traditional auditing methods. Again, savings from this efficiency is passed on to our clients.

Training

We recognise the need to provide the highest quality service to our clients through the services of well-trained and qualified accountants. As such, our Firm spends a high percentage of its annual budget in training its staff. These include courses, seminars, talks and structured in-house training on auditing and industry matters for our students of the following accountancy bodies:-

• Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA)
• The Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants (MICPA)
• The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW)
• The Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA)
• The Malaysian Institute of Taxation
• The Malaysian Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (MAICSA)

Our qualified staff and partners are also required to meet post-qualifying Continued Professional Education (CPE) requirements in order to update themselves on technical matters so as to be able to serve our clients better. In this respect, the Firm requires the senior personnel and the partners to meet the CPE targets imposed by the respective professional bodies of which they are members. In addition to this, the Firm requires these personnel to meet Firm targets by way of attendance and participation at conferences, seminars, talks and schools organised by professional bodies locally and, on an international level. These activities cover topics currently of importance to the profession or specific industries of which our clients are involved in. In this way, our personnel are constantly kept in touch and their skills upgraded to position themselves better in the quality of service afforded to clients.

Other than that, the Firm requires its partners and senior personnel to participate in conferences, seminars and talks as speakers, lecturers or tutors as the process of preparation and delivery at these conferences etc. is an education process by itself. These are often organised for in-house purpose, professional bodies or for our clients.

Industry Knowledge

We recognise that it is imperative that we are knowledgeable of the industries that our clients are involved in. As such, we make it a policy that our staff learn and do research on the industries that we audit and to compile the necessary dossiers on every new field we enter into. These are referred to and updated regularly as there is a need to keep up to date with developments in the specific industries so as to enable us to be better able to serve our clients.

Recruitment

Perhaps our biggest asset is our staff. Recognising this, we have always placed a very high importance on our recruitment strategies. We have always concentrated on recruiting people who have displayed the correct qualities that would enable them to become high calibre accountants. Only people of this quality would be recruited to work on our professional engagements. We realise that only through high calibre personnel are we able to provide high quality services to our clients.

Accounting and Auditing Standards

The Firm adopts MASB Approved Accounting Standards (Private Entities and Entities other than Private Entities) and International Auditing Standards/Approved Standards on Auditing in Malaysia in its professional engagements. In addition, it follows closely the standards, bulletins and guidelines issued by the MIA. Apart from these, the Firm also follows other auditing and accounting related pronouncements generally accepted internationally. Aided by these, the Firm ensures the provision of internationally recognised standards in its work done for clients.

Confidentiality and Secrecy

The Firm imposes upon itself a high level of confidentiality and secrecy on all client matters. Partner, advisors, directors, managers and staff of the Firm have to attest to an undertaking on this matter, and are continually reminded of this undertaking. While on field assignments, it is our policy to identify key client personnel and only to restrict discussion of sensitive matters to such identified personnel. Our staff will not be allowed to discuss such matters with other client personnel. On our part, we identify our senior personnel who are allowed to discuss certain sensitive issues with the identified key client personnel. Other staff of ours would be prohibited from access to such information and are informed on a need-to-know basis.

Our clients’ files are locked up at all times other then when in use by the designated personnel. As and when the need arises, the Firm uses safe deposit boxes in banks to safeguard files and sensitive documents. Files from previous years are stored away from the office at a location only known to the partners and designated senior personnel.