CPD for Non-Practising and Retired Accountants

If you have stopped practising, gone part-time, retired, or moved into a role where you no longer sign anything, a reasonable assumption is that your CPD obligation drops. Sometimes it does, sometimes it halves, sometimes it disappears entirely — and in at least one jurisdiction the regulator was expressly given the power to reduce it and deliberately declined to use it.

There is no general rule here, so the only safe approach is to check your own regime. What follows is what the regimes actually say.

Poland: no reduction, and that was a choice

This is the most interesting case. Poland’s statutory auditors owe 120 lesson hours over three calendar years, and the council resolution applies identically to a biegły rewident wykonujący zawód — one practising — and one niewykonujący zawodu, not practising.

What makes it notable is that the underlying Act expressly permits the council to differentiate between the two, and the council has chosen not to. This is not an oversight or a drafting gap. The power exists and sits unused, which means the full 120 hours and the 24-hour annual minimum apply whether or not you have signed an audit report in three years. See our guide to Polish auditor CPD.

Romania: exactly half

Romania takes the opposite approach and quantifies it cleanly. Non-active financial auditors owe 50% of both the total and the structured minimum — so 20 hours a year instead of 40, with 10 structured instead of 20.

That is unusually tidy. Most regimes that offer relief do it through a case-by-case application rather than a flat proportion.

Italy: full exemption, and it got broader in 2026

Italy’s accountancy regime exempts non-practising members and those on the Elenco Speciale outright.

And from 1 January 2026 the new regulation went further: members who are, or who turn, 65 during the triennium are now fully exempt, replacing the previous reduced obligation of 30 credits. That is a genuine liberalisation, and it is recent enough that most material in circulation still describes the old 30-credit rule.

But there is a trap in it. That exemption covers the professional body’s own training only. It does not extend to training needed to join or remain on external registers — specifically the statutory auditors’ register. The regulation says so expressly.

Which produces this result: a 66-year-old Italian who holds both titles is fully exempt from one regime and owes the full 20 credits a year under the other, because the statutory auditor rules provide no derogations, exemptions or waivers of any kind. Our guides to the commercialisti regime and the revisori legali regime cover both halves.

ICAEW: the obligation is the same, the verifiable share is not

ICAEW does something subtler than reducing hours. Under its CPD Regulations the category totals are 40, 30 or 20 hours depending on category — but the verifiable requirement differs by practice status:

• In practice: 30, 20 or 10 verifiable hours.
• Not in practice: 15, 10 or 5 verifiable hours.

So the total stays put and the evidential burden halves. For someone in an industry role with less access to formal certificated training, that is the constraint that actually bites, and it is the right thing to relax.

ICAEW also requires one hour of ethics training, its only mandated subject, and that applies regardless of practice status. We were not able to establish from ICAEW’s published material what determines whether a member falls in Category 1, 2 or 3, so check that directly rather than inferring it.

ACCA: routes rather than reductions

ACCA’s membership regulation provides three routes, not one, and the practical effect is relief by a different mechanism:

• The unit route — 40 units a year, 21 of them verifiable.
• The Approved Employer route, where members "will not need to document or keep evidence of individual CPD units" at all.
• A part-time route keyed to a 770-hour threshold, where the verifiable floor disappears.

That third route is the one most relevant here and the least known. Separately, the regulation requires all members to maintain competence in professional ethics, with no quota and no verifiability placement attached.

One figure worth knowing for context: of ACCA’s 796 removals for CPD default in a recent year, every one was for paperwork or non-cooperation and none was for doing too little CPD. The risk is administrative, not substantive.

CIMA: no hours to reduce

CIMA prescribes no hours and no units, for any member, in any year. Any CIMA hours figure you encounter is invented. The declaration is constructive — renewing membership is the declaration.

So the non-practising question does not arise. There is nonetheless a Fixed Penalty Scheme and a publicly available record of non-compliant members, so "no hours" is not the same as "no obligation".

Part-time work usually does not help

A common and expensive assumption. The Swiss fiduciary regime states it flatly: a reduction of up to two days is available for documented multi-month inability to work through illness, accident or pregnancy — and part-time employment does not reduce the obligation at all.

Nor does moving out of client-facing work necessarily take you outside a regime. Austria’s audit continuing-education rules reach staff of audit firms who materially contribute to audits, not only licence-holders. Being unlicensed is not the same as being out of scope.

Where relief is discretionary

Several regimes handle this by application rather than by category:

• Spain has a dedicated provision for dispensas y prórrogas — dispensations and extensions.
• Romania’s accountancy body and Italy both allow reductions for interruption of professional activity, Italy from six months and proportionate to the actual interruption.
• Poland offers no reduction but will allow completion up to two years late on a documented and justified request.

The pattern worth noticing: regimes that quantify relief tend not to offer discretion, and regimes that offer discretion tend not to quantify. Few do both.

What to do

Do not assume your status changes anything. Poland is proof that a regulator can hold the power to reduce and decline to use it.

Check whether relief applies to the total or to the verifiable share. ICAEW relaxes the second and not the first, which is a different thing from a reduction.

If you hold two registrations, check both. Italy is the clearest warning: exempt under one, fully bound under the other.

Apply rather than assume. Where relief is discretionary it generally requires a written, documented request — not a quiet reduction in activity.

For the related question of whether a good year can subsidise a thin one, see can you carry CPD hours forward.

Frequently asked questions

Does CPD stop when I stop practising? Rarely. Italy exempts non-practising members; Romania halves the obligation; Poland applies it in full.

Does retiring exempt me? In Italy, from 2026, turning 65 during the triennium brings full exemption from the professional body’s training — but not from any external register you remain on.

Does part-time work reduce it? Generally not. The Swiss regime says so expressly. ACCA offers a separate part-time route keyed to a 770-hour threshold.

I am in industry, not practice — does that help? Under ICAEW the total is unchanged but the verifiable requirement roughly halves.

I am unlicensed audit staff. Am I out of scope? Not necessarily. Austria’s rules reach audit-firm staff who materially contribute to audits.

Keep a defensible record whatever your status, with Learnsignal

The recurring lesson across these regimes is that removals and penalties follow paperwork failures far more often than genuine under-training. Our certificated CPD courses produce the evidence these regimes actually ask for. ICAEW publishes its CPD Regulations at icaew.com.