ACCA vs CIMA CPD: Two Bodies, Two Opposite Systems

ACCA and CIMA are usually treated as variations on one theme: two UK-headquartered accountancy bodies, both requiring members to keep learning. Their CPD systems are not variations on one theme. On almost every dimension that matters to a member — how much, how it is measured, how it is declared, when it starts, what happens if you fail — they have made opposite choices. A member who holds both qualifications is governed by two unlike regimes at once.

Both bodies set their own rules. Neither is implementing a figure handed down from above, which is a point worth establishing first: our explainer on where accountants' CPD requirements come from sets out that the international standard governing this area places its obligation on the member body rather than on the individual, and prescribes no hours figure in any of its requirements. The divergence below is what bodies do with that freedom.

How much

ACCA counts. Membership Regulation 4(4) requires at least 40 units of relevant CPD per calendar year, with at least 21 of them verifiable, and one unit equals one hour. CIMA counts nothing: asked how much CPD to complete, it answers that "CIMA doesn't prescribe hours or units, meaning you can do as much as you feel you need to to remain professionally competent."

CIMA's requirement still has a shape; it is just expressed as frequency rather than volume. Members must work through the CPD cycle at least once a year and keep a record of their learning. So the accurate comparison is not "40 units versus nothing" but "a volume versus a frequency".

How it is measured

ACCA splits its units into verifiable and non-verifiable, and its rulebook definition of verifiable turns on provability: a unit is verifiable if the member can prove they were involved in an acceptable learning activity. The three-question test most people quote — relevance, application, evidence — is ACCA guidance rather than the rule itself.

CIMA has no verifiable category at all, and no evidenced sub-quota. In its place sit two record-level requirements CIMA states as mandatory: a date for each learning activity, and a reflective statement for each one. The test applied at monitoring is relevance to role, not quantity.

Whether the headline number applies to everyone

Neither body is as uniform as its headline suggests, and they are non-uniform in different directions.

ACCA's regulation names three ways of obtaining CPD, of which the 40-unit scheme is one. On the Approved Employer route, members follow the employer's development and appraisal process and, in ACCA's own words, "will not need to document or keep evidence of individual CPD units". A third route lets a member follow another IFAC body's scheme entirely. ACCA's guidance adds a part-time and semi-retired route for members employed 770 hours or less in a CPD year, on which the verifiable floor disappears and the member sets their own level. The detail is in our piece on how ACCA's 40-unit rule applies to only one of three routes.

CIMA has one alternative, and it operates at the monitoring stage: members working for accredited employers, which CIMA names as Premier Partners and Development Quality Partners, may use their personal development plan or appraisal as evidence of compliance. There is no CIMA route permitting a member to satisfy its CPD obligation by following another IFAC body's scheme — which, given CIMA prescribes no hours, would have little to do.

Part-time work

This is the cleanest inversion of the two. ACCA operates a dedicated reduced route below an hours threshold. CIMA states the opposite: part-time employees still need to meet the requirements of their roles, and "There are no special arrangements for members working in part-time jobs."

Career breaks are where CIMA concedes. A member on a career break does not need to continue CPD. ACCA's equivalent relief is a waiver, granted at the discretion of its Admissions and Licensing Committee, for one calendar year at a time, with waivers of the non-verifiable element granted only in exceptional circumstances — and waiver holders still owe the annual declaration.

When the obligation starts

Opposite again. CIMA's requirements begin when a member is elected to membership, the date they may start using the ACMA or FCMA and CGMA letters. ACCA grants up to a year's grace: a new member does not complete CPD in their first calendar year of membership and begins from 1 January of the following year.

For a newly qualified accountant choosing between the two, that is a real difference in the first year and almost never mentioned.

The declaration

ACCA requires a separate, signed annual declaration from every member on every route, due by 1 January for the year just ended. CIMA has no such discrete act. Its Regulations make the declaration constructive: by renewing membership each year, the member thereby declares that they have undertaken CPD in accordance with the requirements, and a false declaration in a renewal application is referable to CIMA's Investigation Committee.

So any source describing a CIMA "annual CPD declaration" as a step a member performs is describing something that does not exist as a separate step. Conversely, an ACCA member who renews but forgets to declare has not complied.

What happens when you fail

ACCA removes. CIMA fines.

ACCA's Membership Regulation 12 provides for removal from the register where a member has breached the declaration duty, the duty to produce records on request, or the conditions of a variation, and has not remedied it within three months. ACCA reports that 0.36% of members were removed for CPD default in 2024, equating to 796 members, of whom 633 had not submitted declarations and 163 had not cooperated with a review. Notably, none of the removals is attributed to having done too little CPD.

CIMA's Regulation 18A establishes a Fixed Penalty Scheme instead, triggered by failing to provide adequate records by a specified date. CIMA's own guidance states that such a member "will be issued with a financial penalty and can face disciplinary action", escalating across repeat breaches to a reprimand and then referral to its Disciplinary Committee, with non-payment itself grounds for termination of membership. CIMA also provides that a record of non-compliant members will be kept and made publicly available. The detail is in our piece on why CIMA sets no CPD hours but fines members who cannot produce records.

Record retention

ACCA states a period: three years as a baseline, extending to six for responsible individuals, Irish sustainability assurance providers and certain Irish auditing certificate holders, and five for registered tax practitioners in South Africa. CIMA states none. Its guidance requires members to keep a record of their learning activities throughout their career and does not specify a retention period anywhere we could locate. Where a comparison table shows a CIMA retention figure, it is supplying something CIMA has not published.

Transparency

ACCA publishes an annual Report on Regulation containing CPD review volumes, declaration compliance percentages and removal statistics. CIMA publishes no comparable CPD monitoring data: it states that a random selection of members is monitored each year without disclosing the size of the sample. That asymmetry is worth bearing in mind when reading any claim about either body's enforcement intensity, because for one of them the numbers exist and for the other they do not.

The trap for dual-qualified members

Three things to keep separate. First, AICPA and CIMA now sit within one association, and its guidance says both bodies' members follow the same CPD policy for CGMA purposes while also saying each continues to follow its own existing policy. That wording is genuinely ambiguous as published, and we are flagging rather than resolving it.

Second, CIMA's "no hours" position is a statement about CIMA membership. It says nothing about a licence to practise. A CIMA member who is also a licensed US CPA remains subject to their state board's continuing professional education requirements, which are statutory, state by state, counted in hours, and carry subject-matter sub-requirements such as ethics. Satisfying one does not satisfy the other.

Third, an ACCA member who also belongs to CIMA cannot simply rely on the IFAC body route without checking: the route requires full membership of the other body and that its policy complies with the international standard, and ACCA reserves the right to verify with that body. Members holding an ACCA practising certificate and audit qualification must produce full ACCA records on review regardless of route.

IFAC's own member profile for the association records its CPD framework as a professional development cycle requiring members to assess their learning needs and undertake relevant activities, with compliance monitored through periodic review — and notes that CIMA reports this itself, which is relaying rather than certifying. The profile is published on IFAC's member directory, and both bodies' own rulebooks remain the only authoritative statement of what their members owe.