Despite stricter exam controls, the body is also updating its syllabus to focus on AI, blockchain and data science.
The UK’s Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the world’s largest accounting body, has announced that it will be scrapping online examinations from March 2026, due to growing concerns over the misuse of artificial intelligence by students to cheat. According to a report by the Financial Times, the ACCA will need candidates to sit exams in physical test centres, allowing remote assessments only in select situations. This move will impact over 500,000 students worldwide.
ACCA chief executive Helen Brand stated that the organisation is finding it difficult to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated cheating techniques enabled by AI tools. She also stated that while the safeguards for online exams have been strengthened over time, those attempting to bypass them are evolving faster than the systems designed to stop them.
Initially, remote exams gained a lot of attention during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure continuity when physical test centres were shut. However, the accounting body now believes technological advances have pushed exam integrity to a tipping point, making the in-person assessment a reliable option.
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Brand also acknowledged that returning to offline exams will not completely eliminate malpractice, pointing out that traditional methods of cheating have existed long before digital tools. Still, she said the change is necessary to protect the credibility of the qualification.
Even after making the exam controls stricter, the ACCA is working on modernising the syllabus. The flagship qualification, which is being updated for the first time in a decade, will place greater emphasis on emerging fields such as AI, blockchain and data science.
The decision comes after the wider scrutiny within the accounting industry. In recent years, several major firms like PwC, KPMG, Deloitte and EY, have faced hefty fines across multiple countries for exam-related misconduct. Notably, EY was fined $100 million in the US in 2022 after employees were found to have cheated on internal ethics tests and misled regulators.
