University of Birmingham professional development module

BSN were very pleased to be invited to lecture at the University of Birmingham for their Professional Development module.

A BSN Director, Pippa Miller-Hawkes spoke to students about what the career of a chartered accountant in practice looks like and what the qualification involves. Pippa was happy to take questions from the students on the differences between larger firms and smaller firms. She was able to draw on her experiences from working at PwC with larger corporate businesses, compared to at BSN working with the SME sector.

Following this, Pippa had set the students a case study group exercise to work through on a sales mandate project for a client. Halfway through the group exercise there was a news release and the chancellor Rishi Sunak had increased capital gains tax to 40% (lets hope this doesn’t happen in the up coming budget!). Students had to show their ability to think through the implications for their clients and whether their advice would change given the news release.

Each group presented back to the room and there were some fantastic examples of students applying commercial acumen to the case study. Overall the session was very well received and there were definitely some budding advisors in the room.