09 September 2003
At CIMA's New Members Celebration, held at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery on 8 September, Sarah Webb, a twenty-five year old Financial Analyst at Rolls-Royce's Risk and Revenue Sharing Division, was announced as the 60,000th CIMA member by Claire Ighodaro, CIMA president.
Claire Ighodaro congratulated CIMA's new members and said "Reaching the 60,000 mark is a great achievement for CIMA, and shows just how important the qualification and our members are to employers around the world."
At 25, Sarah Webb is the perfect example of the changing role of the management accountant. CIMA, which originated in the manufacturing industry, has always focused on providing business accountants, financial and strategy specialists who understand the business as well as the figure. But job titles and roles have changed fundamentally in the past decade, which has seen also seen membership of CIMA double in number.
The word 'accountant' is increasingly being dropped for titles such as 'analyst' and 'financial manager', and roles are far wider in their reach. As Sarah puts it, "I decided that I didn’t want to be a number-crunching accountant. Instead I wanted to influence how financial decisions were made, and how they would affect business, so management accountancy and CIMA were the next steps after graduating."
Claire Ighodaro, President of CIMA and Finance Director of BT Broadband is another great example of the opportunities CIMA provides. She has risen through the ranks of the BT Group and past achievements include leading successful Trade Missions on behalf of the UK Department of Trade and Industry. She is keen for others to have the opportunities that she has benefited from. "All new members can be proud to have joined the ranks of the Chartered Management Accountant with all the new opportunities that this brings. What makes CIMA so valuable and differentiates us from other accountancy bodies is our sole focus on training and qualifying accountants in business."
ENDS
For further information, please contact Louisa Roberts on 020 8849 2427 or e-mail louisa.roberts@cimaglobal.com
CIMA members are Accountants in Business. We represent financial managers and accountants who work in industry, commerce, not-for-profit and public sector organisations. Our key activities are related to Business Strategy, Information Strategy and Finance Strategy. CIMA members are not trained in audit.
CIMA's focus is to qualify students, support members and employers, and protect the public interest. We represent the voice of over 77,000 students and 60,000 members in 154 countries.
CIMA's focus on management functions makes us unique, and we are internationally recognised as offering the financial qualification for business.
CIMA is 'rapidly becoming the chartered qualification of choice' according to recent independent research*, and we work with leading employers in the UK and around the world to train and qualify financial managers. We pride ourselves on the commercial relevance of our syllabus, which is continually enhanced to reflect the latest developments in business. In an age of growing globalisation and intensified competition, the Chartered Management Accountant is fully prepared to meet the need for timely and accurate financial information.
Our members and students work across all business sectors at all levels throughout the world, demonstrating the flexibility of the qualification.
