Welcome

From the President

Accountants come in all shapes and sizes and from all sorts of backgrounds. As the chief executive of a successful business, I’m perhaps not what the outside world expects when they think of accountants. I’m very keen to honour what has gone before, but at a point where so much is changing, in many ways I personify that and I think that’s a strength.

What I want to do most of all with my presidency is make sure that there is nobody in our membership who ever feels like they are on the outside. Inclusion is extremely important to me.

Our strength comes from being a community where everyone can see themselves represented and know their voice matters.

Something I'm keen to put firmly on the agenda during my presidency include widening access to the profession. My own journey shows how transformative pathways and bursary schemes can be to social mobility. It’s also an exciting moment to celebrate that our licensed members support 840,000 UK small businesses – around 15% of the UK’s SMEs – all of whom are unbelievably diverse. Not only that, they are business owners in their own right, as well as powering the UK's SMEs.

I've experienced first-hand the challenges founders face, having started my own practice with my childhood friend, Sophie, and scaled it up.

We need a new approach to the way we support SMEs in this country. SMEs are the lifeblood of the economy and owners and entrepreneurs should not shoulder all the risk. We should look again at the role of taxation and banking in order to enable small businesses to thrive.

I’m very much looking forward to the coming 12 months of my presidency. The new governance changes that came in during Michael's presidency are really exciting to see. With the expanded MAC now in place, that’s a real voice with a super-engaged, keen group of people and the membership couldn't ask for a better set of people to represent them.