Cost and Management Accountant (CMA)
Cost and Management Accountant (CMA) is an estimable and an extremely admirable professional certification that is rendered to an individual, who as a CMA, is considered as a master of the wide-ranging financial management and management accounting domain. The Institute Of Cost Management Accountants Of India that was erstwhile known as The Institute Of Cost and Works Accountants Of India, was primarily established in 1944 as a company under the Companies Act, 1956 with its prime objective of promoting, regulating and developing the profession of Cost Accountancy.
The highly reputable Institute Of Cost Management Accountants Of India was fundamentally established on 28th May,1959 as a statutory professional body by a special act of Parliament, that is the Cost and Works Accountants Act, 1959, for the regulation of the expansive profession of cost and management accountancy in India.
The Institute of Cost Management Accountants of India, that has its headquarters in Kolkata, along with four regional councils in Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai, along with a number of important chapters that are situated elsewhere in India and also abroad, is the only recognised statutory professional organisation and licensing body in India that specialises exclusively in Cost and Management Accountancy.
The Institute of Cost Management Accountants of India is responsible for conducting the strenuous and onerous albeit highly renowned exams of Cost and Management Accountant ie the CMA exams across India and also in some parts abroad, and a candidate who clears all the three eclectic CMA levels would be bestowed with a prestigious professional certification of a CMA.
A Cost and Management Accountant is a professional who furnishes his adroit services for evaluating the cost or prices of different goods and services. Such an individual also helps his organization for preparation, verification or certification of cost accounting and related statements.
At present, there are around 90,000highly skilled and learned CMA's in India, who have immeasurably contrived towards great industrial and economical growth in the country and besides this, there are more than 5,00,000 students who are pursuing the ICMAI course.
Also its pertinent to mention that a professionally qualified CMA would rightly propel his organization by generating value for stakeholders in the limitless socio-economic sphere, by way of their adroit competencies that they draw from their very strong and unique combination of strategy, management and also accounting.
A CMA possesses an expansive and a broad-based knowledge of Financial Planning and Analysis, Cost Management, Decision Analysis, Risk Management, Financial Management and Internal Controls etc and this multidisciplinary knowledge base of a CMA is highly advantageous for a CMA, whom companies always scout for, as these CMA's get innumerable job opportunities to work in organizations of all sizes, they can work in MNC's, industries of all types, such as a manufacturing industry. A CMA can also work for any public or private enterprise, NPO's, government bodies, teaching institutions etc. wherein they are highly paid.
Also with the rapidly evolving, highly dynamic and globally integrated business world, CMA's have unfathomable scope for career growth, not only in the Indian market but also in other countries, especially USA
as in 2018, The Institute of Cost Management Accountants of India entered into a joint Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Institute of Management Accountants, USA for enabling mutual recognition of this professional accounting course. A member of ICWAI can thus get enrolled as a member of IMA USA and vice versa, with great ease and this has unfurled a plethora of opportunities for the CMA, India students who can now easily practice all over the world. One can therefore decipher that opting for the CMA certification is a highly appreciable and a good career move, especially for the individuals who aspire to make it big in the field of management accounting, the scope of which is sky high and has absolutely no limits.
However donning the cap of an adept and proficient CMA is not a cakewalk, and is considered as a herculean task for all, as there are primarily three comprehensive and detailed levels with several different subject papers, that a student must clear, so as to accomplish his dream of becoming a CMA.