Questions about CMA (Cc: Professor Kennedy of EBS)

Dear All,

I am seriously considering of being a Management Accountant.

And after looking at the link below, I found that there are more CMA-organizations than I originally thought.

http://www.degreeinfo.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9626


From what I originally knew, there is this Chartered Institute of Management Accountant (www.cimaglobal.com). It requires students to sit for 16 papers to get a "ACMA" in its business card.

Then, after reading the thread above, I found out there are two more:

1) Institute of Management Account (from US??)http://www.imanet.org/ima/index.asp

2) The Society of Management Accountants (from UK??)


Now, when I thought CIMA was the only one, here comes a total of 3 all of a sudden!


Can anyone, especially Prof. Kennedy, tell me the difference?

Which one is THE leading organization?


Thanks,

Michael

 

I once spent some unfruitful time (over a year) on a committee of British universities trying to agree with the Accountancy bodies a common set of criteria which would define an accountancy degree. Its subtext was to try to get a merger of the numerous accountancy professional bodies operating in the UK (I think there was about 7 at the time).

Almost a total waste of time. Nobody could agree; all professed that they wanted to agree but, I supect, none were willing to take the risk that the grounds for separate bodies might not survive realisation that there was not much of a genuine basis for their separate existence.

As to what the difference is between the two new bodies unearthed as a result of a question on this Board I hesitate, nay, decline, to offer an answer. CIMA is certainly the best known in the UK and they still invite me to the occasional function.

 

The IMA in the U.S. has an international membership base and sponsors the CMA (Certified Management Accountant)

As I understand it, once you get outside of the U.S., most countries prefer "Chartered" rather than certified.

I would say it depends on what country you're in as to which designation you should pursue.

The U.S. CMA is an academic exam, as is the CPA. If you have a chance to get a CPA, I would get that, too. I sat for the CPA and CMA exams concurrently. There is about 40% overlap between the two exams (or at least, there was when I took them back in 1978).

The U.S. CMA does not have the recognition that the CPA does. Although management accountants need different skill sets and most CPAs are not quallified to jump into controller/CFO positions from public accounting, the perception in the market place seems to be that the CPA is more desireable from a hiring perspective. Further, because the IMA decided to launch its CFM (Certified in Financial Management) designation, I feel it hurt the CMA program by not devoting the resources to marketing/branding the designation to the management public that it otherwise could have.

They may have fixed the problem since I resigned my IMA membership about 6 years ago, but I doubt it.