An extraordinary sea-based schooling experience gave Pittsburgh student Jennifer Perdoch CA a thirst for travel. Eight years after moving to the UK she qualified with ICAS and is now a Director at KPMG UK. Ryan Herman hears about her journey

The Semester at Sea programme surely ranks among the more extraordinary ways of studying for a degree anywhere in the world. Each year, around 600 undergraduates spend an academic term travelling to different continents on a cruise ship.

Guests join the cruise to give talks and lectures. But these are no run-of-the-mill orators – visiting speakers have included Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Indira Gandhi, Arthur C Clarke, Fidel Castro and Mother Theresa. Not surprisingly, students often describe the experience as life-changing.

Jennifer Perdoch CA embarked on her Semester at Sea voyage in January 2005 while studying accounting at the University of Pittsburgh. Joining the programme fuelled her ambition to live and work abroad. And, eight years after moving to the UK, she was able to earn the CA designation.

“You’re studying while you’re at sea,” she explains. “But you also get to visit around nine different countries, spending four to five days in each destination. So, yes, it’s a very quick snapshot of a place but it allows you free time to go out and explore. My Semester at Sea started in Vancouver. We then went through Asia, Africa and South America and finished in Fort Lauderdale. It really made me want to see more of the world.”

Career launch

In the US, unlike the UK, an accounting degree is a prerequisite for sitting the exams to become a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). “When you leave university, you already have several years and many courses in accounting, which means you can go straight into taking the CPA exams,” says Perdoch.

“Between my third and fourth years of university, I spent the summer as an intern with KPMG, and I had a good experience working on some of their engagements. Of course, whether you like working somewhere also comes down to the people and whether you feel like you fit culturally. And I really enjoyed it.”

So, when KPMG later offered Perdoch a full-time position in Philadelphia, it was an easy decision to make. She had to spend a minimum of three years with the Big Four firm in the US before fulfilling her ambition of working for the company in a different country. Then, in 2010, a position became available in London.

“My goal was to work abroad because of the experience I’d had at university [with Semester at Sea]. I love seeing new places, meeting new people, experiencing different cultures. That was also one of the reasons to join a big firm like KPMG. But it was kind of a bold move to apply for a job in a country I’d never been to and knew relatively little about. For example, I thought it rained every day in London.

“It is also a great base for travelling around Europe, and I hadn’t seen much of the continent at that point. But also, with London being such a big city, the chance to work on some of KPMG’s biggest and most complex engagements was just an amazing opportunity for me.”

Perdoch found some striking differences between accountancy in the US and the UK. “In the US, we only do statutory accounts for companies that are listed, have a bank covenant or are large private entities,” she says. “So when I came over to the UK, and we had 80 subsidiary statutory accounts for the first engagement I was working on, that just blew my mind.

“It made me think about my project management and how I needed to adjust my working style and accommodate for the fact that there are clear differences in the training programmes between the two countries. Over here you can have people come into KPMG who have got a degree in geography, history or another subject. That was very different to the US, so I needed to adjust my coaching style. I couldn’t assume they’re going to have all this built-up knowledge that my first-year associates in the US would have had.”

And, of course, there were also the cultural differences: “Philadelphia is a big city in its own right. But in London, you could probably find somebody from most of the countries in the world. That was amazing. I knew it was diverse, but I didn’t realise the extent of it and how much culture there is beyond just the history of London itself.

“In my free time I enjoy hiking. In the US we have some amazing national and state parks so when I went walking with people I was shocked. They would say, ‘We’re gonna just walk across this field.’ I was like, ‘Is this not someone's property?’ ‘Yeah, but we have these rights of way.’ That surprised me, in a good way, how accessible it is and how people want to have the outdoors for everyone.”

By 2018, Perdoch was keen to take her career to the next level and step up from Senior Manager to Director. Fortunately, a mutual recognition agreement between ICAS and the CPA provided a streamlined process for her to become a CA.

“I wanted to keep progressing, and continually challenging myself was important. Becoming a CA was a big commitment but I only had to take the case study and ethics exams. So I thought: this is doable.

“I approached KPMG. And I said, ‘Look, I would like to do this, I would like to become a director, I want to be an RI [Responsible Individual], and I understand this is my path to doing it.’

“It was an interesting experience because I hadn’t taken an exam in over 10 years. And it was kind of humbling in the sense that I was one of the oldest people in the room. The exam process was quite quick, a matter of months, but there’s also a two-year training experience.”

Route to progress

By April 2020, Perdoch was able to attach the CA designation to her name. “The CA qualification is not just well known around the world – it also opens doors, including some doors that the US qualification doesn’t, purely because of the mutual recognition agreements.

“Also, just on a very personal level, it allowed me to get my RI status in the UK, which I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, and that has allowed me to progress at KPMG.”

Perdoch was a director in the corporate listed and regulated department, but recently took an internal secondment in the quality department.

“I’m specifically working with the Chief Auditor, and we’re supporting the largest and most complicated audited entities at KPMG. The thing with audit is that it’s not a destination, it’s more of a continuous journey. We’ve all seen that the regulatory environment in the UK is evolving, as well.

“I love seeing new places, meeting new people, experiencing different cultures. That was one of the reasons to join a big firm like KPMG”

“So we have to improve what we’re doing and make sure the investors have confidence in the financial statements. In this quality function, you can have a bigger impact in terms of working with a lot of engagements teams and making sure that we deliver high-quality audits.”

Indeed, a recent report from the Financial Reporting Council showed the quality of audit reports from KPMG had improved from 74% to 89%, while that of some Tier 1 firms sitting just below the Big Four fell steeply.

Looking more broadly at the profession, Perdoch believes it is going through an interesting period of evolution – and that this message must be communicated to the next generation of would-be accountants. “I think we need to do more as a profession to highlight all the exciting developments and all the new work that is coming along around areas like sustainability,” she says.

“There’s a risk that people think about what accounting was 10 or 15 years ago, instead of thinking about ESG [environmental, social and governance] and what we’re doing with data analytics. We’re also bringing AI into how we work on audits.

“So we need people who have different skillsets coming into the profession, and hopefully these changes can be exciting for the next generation.”

Furthermore – and Perdoch is herself an embodiment of this – accountancy is a profession that, with the right qualifications, provides exceptional opportunities for working overseas, and all the invaluable life experiences that come with that.

For CAs hoping to work on the other side of the Atlantic, Perdoch says: “Just go for it. It has been an amazing experience [for me] to come over and live in the UK.”

kpmg.com

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