ANAN advises business leaders on corporate governance

The Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) has advised business leaders on the need to entrench sound corporate governance principles on their businesses. This, the accounting body said, will enhance their growth and profitability.

In a communique issued at the end of its 25th Annual National Conference in, Abuja President and Chairman of Council, ANAN Prof. Muhammad Mainoma, said that the primary concern for every business seeking to achieve sustainable growth and development is developing effective financial management capabilities for their workforce.

Other participants including Director of Audit, and Acting Auditor General, Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation, Aghughu Adolphus, Representative of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Abdullahi Ya’u, among others agreed that the expected growth and profitability will not happen if an organisation does not set up the right measures to improve its operations in terms of governance and leadership.

The group advised to deploy recommendable effort and skills to minimise costs while seeking to attain higher revenue levels for the benefit of their organisations.

“The gold standard in financial management is more revenue, less costs and more investments leading to sustainable growth. Under these prevailing global economic conditions, the accountant has no choice than to be innovative and technology is a Siamese twin with innovation”.

“The accountant must not be reactive or taken unawares – he or she must foresee the future, upgrade his competencies and techniques and move with the times to be able to respond to the changing environment. The place of the Accountant must be at the forefront and should even be the one initiating the disruptive technologies,” they said.

According to the communique, the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in financial reporting can never be undermined. It is a tool that the business community can never fathom to exempt in financial reporting. AI which is simulated intelligence in machines programmed to think, act and or mimic human intellectual ability is ‘applied’ and this application goes far and wide beyond better or faster processes. It inspires new ways of operating and building businesses globally.

The stakeholders argued that AI is complimenting human intelligence and has not yet reached the level of replacing human intelligence completely, it could be a possibility in the future as its capabilities are being improved upon.

“Accountants in the 21st century and indeed future accountants would need to develop ways to improve their efficiencies in completing assignments and transforming their duties beyond achieving the normal minimum of analysis and interpretation of financial statements.”

“Accounting and finance professionals would need to go further to understand chain analysis, and just so, future accountants may not be regular day-to-day humans who get to office and opens some database to run some operations but rather those who are able to interpret financial transactions and events beyond what normal humans can imagine, think or see. AI in this sense is improving the way modern-day accounting and finance professionals think and view the world of business,” they said.