Training Across the Alliance
Training & talent · Early careers ·
A whistle-stop tour of how Praxity firms are bringing the next generation into the profession and a closer look at one of our member firms and how they run their apprentice scheme.
The talent challenge
The talent challenge facing the accounting profession is being felt in every region of the Alliance. It has become one of the defining issues of the moment, and the industry knows it: attracting and keeping good people is now a point of real competitive difference. Fewer young people are entering the profession, firms know they need to draw in the brightest, and the competition for them is only intensifying.
In this edition of HUB we look at the routes open to someone at the very start of their career across the Alliance, whether they arrive as a graduate or straight from school. We also take a closer look at how one member firm, Nwanda in Johannesburg, builds it all out in full.
One model, many names
Apprenticeship, cadetship, graduate scheme, registered apprenticeship: whatever it is called locally, the idea is the same - bring people in on real client work from day one and fund their study toward a professional qualification while they do it. That shared model means that a trainee's experience is broadly recognisable from one member firm to the next. That recognisability is exactly what makes moving between firms possible later on.
The interest is in the local detail. In the UK, Shorts in Chesterfield runs an apprentice and postgraduate scheme as an ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales)- and ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants)-approved employer, taking people on every year across accountancy, tax, payroll, IT and private client, with quarterly reviews keeping progress on track. At PM+M in Lancashire the same ladder is open to school leavers and graduates, from an AAT (Association of Accounting Technicians) apprenticeship for GCSE and A-Level leavers through to trainee tax adviser as either an apprenticeship or a graduate route.
In the Netherlands, Vallei brings people in through work-study and graduation placements. Its afstudeerstage pairs a student's final research project with real practice on themes such as digitalisation and data-driven working, and leads into a junior assistant-accountant role. In the US, Plante Moran in Detroit builds its pipeline around a multi-year Track internship, with coaching, national training and both a buddy and a team partner for every joiner, and college credit available as part of the placement. While in Florida in the US, Kaufman Rossin has adapted as the rules have moved, running its earlier PATH programme to help students meet Florida's former 150-hour requirement and adjusting again now that Florida has opened a 120-hour route.
In Canada, MNP brings people in through the co-op and articling routes, backing articling accountants toward the CPA (Chartered Professional Accountant) designation with in-house training through MNP University and structured support through the demanding Common Final Examination.
In Mexico, JA Del Rio in Guadalajara recruits students still completing their degrees into junior estudiante roles on a hybrid basis, fed by university partnerships renewed each year. CPA Ferrere, a 600-strong firm spanning Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, brings accounting and business administration students into tax, audit, outsourcing and consulting, with hybrid working, 15 study days and discounts on postgraduate study.
In Dubai, Griffin Nagda builds its trainee roles around the ACCA route and the hands-on experience the ACCA Practical Experience Requirement demands. In India, Seshachalam & Co in Hyderabad offers a particularly integrated version of the model in the CA (Chartered Accountant) articleship, where three years of paid practical training form part of the chartered accountancy qualification itself.
In Australia and New Zealand, William Buck supports its graduates through the CA Program with mentorship, study resources and up to three days' study leave per module.
Secondments across the Alliance
Many member firms already arrange secondments directly with one another, without any support from the Alliance. However, the Alliance is relaunching a shared space where firms can see and post the secondment opportunities available across the Alliance. Better visibility is the point, and it turns a set of private bilateral arrangements into something every member can reach into.
There is already a well-established connection between MNP in Canada and William Buck in Australia and New Zealand, with a track record behind it and growing appetite on both sides to do more. MNP is now looking to open further routes into the UK, France and beyond. The reason that particular corridor works so well is largely down to opposite busy seasons. When the northern hemisphere is buried in year-end work, the southern hemisphere is quiet, and the position reverses six months later. Reciprocal secondments start to look ideal, sending people where the work is at exactly the point their home desk has gone quiet.
UK firms see it too. Rouse Partners in Beaconsfield is starting its own programme, with an eye on inbound audit help through the busy periods and outbound opportunities for its own team alongside. Firms in France such as Talenz, and in Australia such as SW, are widening the pool of willing hosts. It is not without friction, since overlapping busy seasons and immigration rules can get in the way, but the direction of travel is clear. A trainee can qualify at a mid-sized independent firm in Chesterfield, Hyderabad or Montevideo and still spend part of their early career working inside another member firm on the far side of the Alliance. That reach and opportunity elevate learning and development at a Praxity firm.
Inside Nwanda’s training
One firm shows what the model looks like when it is built out in full. Nwanda Incorporated, in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, is an accredited SAICA (South African Institute of Chartered Accountants) training office and an IRBA (Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors)-registered audit firm.[SL1.1] Development there is an apprenticeship in the truest sense: people[C2.1] graduates work and study at the same time, learn on live engagements under supervisors accountable for developing them, and are assessed continuously against the standards set by SAICA, the IRBA and the firm's own quality management policies.
Learn on the job, while you study
From the first months of a training contract, learning happens on live client engagements rather than in a classroom, with academic study running alongside the work. The training regulations require practical experience to make up the largest part of a trainee's learning, and Nwanda applies that literally. Trainees are placed on real audit, accounting, tax and advisory work from the outset, supervised throughout, and given progressively greater range and responsibility rather than repetition of what they can already do. Where an exposure genuinely cannot be found on a live engagement it is supplemented by simulation, though the job always comes first.
Ethics as the organising principle
Nwanda's Training and CPD (Continuing Professional Development) Manual treats ethical competence as far broader than following a code, taking in ethical knowledge, the skill to decide and communicate under pressure, and behaviour that holds up in practice. Trainees' ethical reasoning is developed through deliberate discussion and formal ethics training at regular intervals across the contract, each followed by structured reflection. The same discipline runs above trainee level: registered auditors record at least three hours of ethics learning a year, and during 2025 professional staff completed assessed CPD on the IRBA and IESBA (International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants) codes, including the technology revisions that deal directly with the ethical implications of AI and automated tools in an audit.
Learning that is evidenced off the work
If the work is where the learning happens, the evidence has to come off the work too. Each month every trainee records what they actually did on a client engagement and links it to the competencies and professional values it developed, and that record is reviewed and rated by the senior, manager or director who ran the engagement while it is still fresh. Every six months the trainee, their evaluator and a SAICA-registered assessor review progress across all seven professional competency areas and agree a development plan for the next period. Exposure is measured as well as judged: each trainee must record at least 600 hours of core experience every six months, with timesheets monitored monthly so that a gap or an overload surfaces early enough to act on.
Supervision treated as teaching
Because most of the learning is informal, its quality depends entirely on the people running the engagements, so Nwanda treats supervision as a teaching role. Supervisors carry explicit responsibility for developing a trainee's technical and professional competencies alongside their ethical values, through coaching on the job and structured feedback after every significant assignment. They are trained for the role annually, including on changes to the training regulations, and their performance in it is formally assessed. Development does not stop at qualification either: the firm offers the IRBA Audit Development Programme to registered candidate auditors, a minimum of 18 months and 1,500 productive hours under an oversight auditor, where the judgement that carries the most risk to clients, firm and public is refined.