Clearing the Forensic Audits and Fraud Detection Course – Akshay Kila (GFMB’16) Shares His Journey
Akshay Kila (GFMB 2016) recently completed the Forensic Audits and Fraud Detection course, exclusively offered to Charted Accountants by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. How does a course like this help in the current market? We caught up with Akshay to learn more about the course and how it could help our students.
Could you tell us about your family business?
You can call us a financial supermarket, providing end to end services to our clients (sourcing, investment & disbursement, taxation/corporate advisory). We give loans to people looking for vehicular or personal/enterprise loans and have about 2.5 lakh customers in Delhi & NCR. Our investment team comprises equity analysts and brokers who help our clients in taking major investment decisions. However, the core of it all is our CA firm. We have a 35-year-old CA firm with 14 partners who are experts in GST, international taxation, and forensic audits.
The ideology behind our CA firm is that we are not compliance officers; we act as our clients’ virtual CFOs and help their business grow by leveraging our existing client base or our networks.
You recently cleared the Forensic Audits and Fraud Detection course, exclusively offered to Charted Accountants. What inspired you to take up this certification course? Do you have any tips on clearing this?
The Forensic Audits and Fraud Detection (FAFD) is a course offered by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India) ICAI. Clearing this course enables us to get audits of nationalised banks, public sector units (PSUs), stock exchanges and big corporates.
The biggest motivation for me was the GFMB course and the learning I gained both in the class and during our numerous industry visits. The course taught me to do something big, to grow my family business, and to do whatever it takes to fulfil my dreams.
Once you become a CA, you need to give 3 more exams and undertake 6 months of practical training to qualify for FAFD. If you have the right motivation and direction, the course can be cleared very easily.
How has this course helped you in your business?
Due to increasing white-collar crimes in the financial industry, the need for Forensic Auditors is on a rise. You can’t catch a white-collar conman with a generic Chartered Accountancy expertise. You require tools and knowledge of forensics. After the Satyam case and the recent fraud at PNB Bank, the need for a forensic auditor has increased multi-fold. At present, there are only 3240 forensic auditors in India. The supply is much lower than the current demand.
What can you tell us about your SP Jain experience? Any fond memories you recollect?
Some of the best moments of my life were in SP Jain with my friends, batchmates, and my teachers (who have now become my lifelong Gurus). I was the organiser of our Annual event in GFMB (UDAAN). The learnings that I gained organising that event was something I could have never learnt anywhere. It was like starting a new business, bonding with different team heads, making them do what they would have never thought of doing, and guiding them in performing activities the way you had envisioned them. The theme for our event was “KAROBAR”. And yes, it did go a long way in teaching me the intricacies of running a Karobar (Business).
