[Accounting Society President Election] Jeong Min-geun "Need to Revise Excessive Accountability System for Accountants"

Candidate No. 2 Jeong Min-geun, Vice Chairman of Deloitte Anjin

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jihwan] "The President of the Korean Institute of Certified Public Accountants (KICPA) must work solely for its members. I will transform KICPA into a member-centered organization."

On the 3rd, Jeong Min-geun, Vice Chairman of Deloitte Anjin and a candidate for the KICPA presidential election on the 17th, stated in an interview with Asia Economy, "To strengthen the independence of the KICPA president, I will prohibit holding concurrent positions at other accounting firms or as outside directors."

While KICPA has so far handled regulatory functions requested by supervisory bodies such as the Financial Supervisory Service, it now aims to become an organization that listens to the voices of its members. He emphasized, "I will focus on collecting members' inconveniences and suggestions and delivering them to the government," adding, "I will make KICPA an institution with significantly enhanced functions to protect members' rights and interests."

He also said that the accounting industry should change in a way that reduces the excessive responsibilities and regulations currently borne by accountants. Accordingly, he plans to push for a legal amendment to reduce the liability period for damages related to accounting audits from 8 years to 5 years. He said, "It is urgent to ease the excessive responsibilities imposed on external auditors," and added, "Legal responsibilities include civil, criminal, and administrative liabilities, and I will work to eliminate such overlapping responsibilities."

Furthermore, he intends to promote the relaxation of auditor registration requirements for listed companies. He believes that registration requirements should be differentiated according to the size of accounting firms and that requirements unrelated to audit quality should be completely removed. Jeong pointed out, "Currently, the auditor registration requirements for listed companies consist of management-related criteria such as the number of personnel, many of which are unrelated to audit quality."

He added, "Even small and medium-sized accounting firms that have already met the auditor registration requirements face management difficulties due to costs incurred from maintaining these requirements," emphasizing, "It is necessary to ease regulations considering the size of accounting firms."

In addition, Jeong Min-geun proposed pledges including △support for revitalizing activities of youth, women, and regional CPAs associations △support for inactive members △relaxation of accounting firm establishment requirements and consideration of allowing single-person offices (branches) for small accounting firms.

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