The officers of the Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) provide a trusted and responsive regulatory environment for businesses and public accountants. They always strive to achieve a right balance between their roles as regulators as well as facilitators.

By Roland Tan

The Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) was created in 2004 with the merger of the former Registry of Companies and Businesses (RCB) and the Public Accountants’ Board. ACRA is the registration body for public accountants. It seeks to maintain high standards of auditing and corporate reporting by companies.

It is also the registration authority for limited liability partnerships, companies and business firms. ACRA encourages voluntary compliance by improving awareness of various regulatory rules among business owners and directors through public seminars. These rules are further refined through dialogues and consultations with various stakeholders before they are made laws and ultimately enforced by ACRA.

Balancing act
That is the challenge that 27-year-old Tan Seow Pia faces as Head (Representations and Summons) of ACRA’s Enforcement Division: the constant need to balance her roles as both facilitator and regulator.

“Prosecution is only used as a last resort,” explains Seow Pia. “There was a case I handled a few months ago where it looked quite certain that we had to initiate prosecution against the offender. He was a director of a company and he had failed to comply with statutory requirements. However, after explaining the repercussions of his failure to comply with his statutory obligations to various stakeholders like creditors, shareholders and investors, he admitted his mistake. He took corrective action to remedy the defaults and avoided court prosecution after ACRA offered an appropriate composition fine for the offence. He promised to be prompt in his filings in future.”

“Quite often, it is not true that people do not want to comply with regulations, but rather that they do not know how to. So we achieve compliance through education and creating awareness,” she says.

Clearly, the method works, because the World Bank ranked Singapore second in its Doing Business series last year, and ACRA is proud to have contributed towards this achievement.

Make positive impact
Seow Pia graduated from the National University of Singapore with an Honours degree in Economics. She first started as a contract officer at a statutory board before joining the private sector as a financial analyst. Although the perks were good, Seow Pia grew dissatisfied with the preoccupation with numbers and meeting the bottom line. She realised that she wanted a job that would provide wider exposure, and the opportunity to help other people. In short, she wanted a job that would allow her to make a positive impact.

That was why Seow Pia joined the former RCB in 2003 and stayed on when ACRA was formed. “I knew this job would give me the exposure I was looking for. I have been with the organisation for some years now, so it must have been a good decision,” she says with a smile. “The formation of ACRA has further expanded the variety of work and opportunities available to an ACRA officer.”

Seow Pia began her career in ACRA as a Senior Compliance Management Officer. She worked closely with her colleagues from the various divisions, attending to cases of alleged breaches of legislation that ACRA administers. She was also involved in the designing and implementation of IT systems related to compliance modules in Bizfile, an ACRA electronic filing module which had received both local and international recognition and awards.

Broad roles to play
More interestingly, Seow Pia also enjoyed the opportunity to reach out directly to the public. “I represented ACRA as a speaker in one public seminar, along with representatives from five other government agencies. At the time, I was barely into my second year at ACRA,” she says with pride. She now looks forward to representing ACRA in future international seminars as a participant or an invited speaker. The Corporate Registers Forum is one such seminar. It is an organisation of international corporate regulators that ACRA is a member of.

Seow Pia is also involved in other equally satisfying assignments such as formulating of policies on compliance and enforcements matters, representing ACRA in criminal cases prosecuted before the Subordinate Courts, reviewing crime trends for offences within ACRA purview and recommending strategies for curbing the rise of such trends. At the same time, she attends to queries from business owners, and responds to frequently asked questions posted on “ASK ACRA”, ACRA’s own online interactive query system.

Looking ahead, Seow Pia hopes to gain exposure in other areas of work within ACRA. The organisation provides her with many interesting opportunities. For example, there is the business facilitation division, which provides an efficient and effective system of registration for entrepreneurs. There is the information resource division, which maintains the database of registered entities — a rich repository of information that is valuable for setting up a regulatory framework that emphasises transparency, accountability and good corporate governance.

Seow Pia can also undertake equally challenging and interesting roles in policy formulation, or regulatory work involving public accountants and auditors. Training is always available for ACRA officers who wish to take on any of these roles. As a People Developer organisation, ACRA values its human resources and ensures that its staff members enjoy continual personal development along with good career prospects and progression.

Good service starts within
Ultimately, ACRA seeks to provide good service to its customers and stakeholders. Good service starts from within, and ACRA’s informal corporate culture helps to create a happy working environment that encourages a positive service attitude.

“We hold to our values which are encapsulated in the acronym ‘I-ACRA’, which stands for Integrity, Alert and Agile, Collaborative, Respect and Add Value. Our Chief Executive holds regular informal sessions with ACRA officers to see how we fare and often drops by to chat at our work stations,” says Seow Pia. “Hierarchy is never an issue, and the interaction between colleagues is very informal.”

ACRA also believes in active corporate citizenship, and the organisation participates in a number of volunteer programmes. For example, ACRA has adopted the Geylang East Home For The Aged.

ACRA has certainly achieved a lot in a short time, and Seow Pia has benefited greatly from these changes. She has become stronger and more self-assured, and she looks forward eagerly to what else the future would bring.