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Jag's Journey

Sharing my life experiences including the Associate Chartered Accountant (ACA) qualification

ICAEW ACA Case Study – How Much Preparation Is Enough?

The ACA Case Study was an exam I had not heard much about in detail before my time came to prepare for the exam. I was always one to book annual leave to ensure I had enough time to revise for the exams, especially as I would sit three at a time . When asking my work friends how much time I would need to book off for the ACA Case Study exam they would state only a day or two . As a lot of the exam is skills based and dependant on the real exam itself, it is difficult to know whether you have done enough preparation. I therefore thought I would write this blog to hopefully help.

Note : you may also want to refer to ICAEW Case Study Made Easy , ACA Case Study Marking Key as well as ICAEW Software Testing for more help on the ACA Case Study exam.

Check out my  YouTube video  if you would prefer watching to reading!

Table of Contents

Advanced information (ai), past aca case study mock exams, planning sheets, how much preparation is actually needed, how similar are these mocks to the real exam.

The AI is provided six weeks before the ACA Case Study exam. When the AI was released, I of course took a look to see what industry the business was in. For me, it was Beal the magazine company. As expected, I then read the whole AI when I had more time and went through, very slowly, with the highlighter.

Here is a checklist I have pulled together for what information you need to ensure to pull out of the AI:

• Details of who the report will be from so you can form your disclaimer – join my journey for a draft disclaimer included on the overall timing sheet with a draft structure for the report too
• Benchmarks/targets/key performance indicators (KPIs) for Requirement 1 – this will give you quick and easy marks in the real exam if you state whether these have been met or not
• The relevant PY figures from the AI for Requirement 1 – join my journey to receive how I laid this out and set it up for my Case Study as well as a blank template for your own that you can populate and copy in your exam
• For Requirement 2 and 3 you will need to pull out assumptions and these will come from the AI. The AI should also help you with the calculations for these. For my case study, I was able to pull out at least a page of assumptions from the AI!
• Business issues and wider context that you can put into any of the exam requirements such as whether the industry is competitive
• The ethics marks you should be able to easily identify these from the articles at the end of the AI

Something to consider is whether you need to practice past ACA Case Study mock exams. Now, I studied with Kaplan who really did not focus on the real potential exam much at all to begin with. Even when the AI was out, we would still be going through past paper exams. This was very frustrating at the time but in hindsight, it was definitely beneficial .

We actually ended up going through four ACA Case Study mock exams both in class and as homework and then ran through the real AI and two mocks for this too. Given each mock exam is four hours long, this was definitely not fun. However, timing is KEY with this exam and it is very important to nail timing . If you mess up your timings, leading to an incomplete report as a result, this could result in failure . If you need help with timings, join my journey to receive my timings sheet.

I would therefore strongly recommend practicing at least a couple of ACA Case Study mock exams. Not only will it help ensure you are able to stay on top of your timings but another plus is that it does really help you to understand the mark scheme . The more you practice, the more you start to figure out where the marks/”diamonds” come from and how the mark scheme actually works. For example, knowing which figures are in bold and are needed or how conclusions and the Executive Summary needs to be written.

If you have joined my journey, you should also have been sent some blank planning sheets . These were very helpful when I was studying for the ACA Case Study so I thought I would share these. I only really went into detail on this planning sheet for Requirement 1. This requirement is quite predictable based on the AI in the sense that you should be able to grasp whether the areas of interest are revenue, gross profit and operating profit for example.

What is nice is that the AI purposely gives you three years of management accounts. The AI actually gives example analysis of the year-on-year movements too where they use a range of different numbers and movements. This should help you to prepare for Requirement 1 so you can get an idea of what kind of analysis comments , such as revenue mix, may score a “diamond”. However, a lot of this information and the marks are in the real exam so make sure to pull all of this information into your answers.

I thought it would be helpful if I showed you my Requirement 1 planning sheet for Beal so you can get the gist of how I did this:

Essentially for the Requirement 1 planning sheet I would draft it out similarly to how I have done. Include PY comparison figures so you have these to hand such as PY revenue growth or revenue mix. Also ensure to include business issues and wider context points and recommendations . If your AI mentions any benchmarks/targets/KPIs I would note to comment on whether they were met. Additionally, if there are any bank loan covenants to comment on a breach based on overdraft, note this down. A draft conclusion can also be made based on past mark schemes.

In college we did go through and do a few more planning sheets to Requirement 2 and 3 but I did not really use these given the reduction in predictability. It looks like I have more sheets stapled to the Requirement 1 sheet photographed. However, there are all actually blank (sorry to disappoint) . I pulled this together myself but it may be worth going through this with a friend or study buddy . This may speed up time and it does help with this exam if you all write the same!

It does actually sound like I did a LOT of preparation for the ACA Case Study exam. Looking back, I guess I actually did. Here is a list of points that I think you must do :

• Read the AI and pull out everything I have said above!
• Practice a couple of past mock exams to time so you can nail timings and understand the mark scheme – depending on how well you do, you may need more practice.
• Draft a table with the PY figures for Appendix 1 so you can copy this out into the exam and get started almost straight away
• Practice a mock exam based on your AI . Hopefully you are with a training provider so you have access to this or see the next section for an alternative

Anything else on top of this is just an added bonus , such as the next section of this blog. The Requirement 1 planning sheet is not a must do but it really is worthwhile if you do have the time. You could also draft some standard recommendations for Requirement 2 or 3. I have included a photo of a some I had made below for Beal.

Given the above bullet points, I think you should not need to spend more than a few days on preparing for the ACA Case Study exam outside of college. It is very skills based in terms of how you structure and write your report. Many of the marks are going to be in the real exam so through practice, you should get better at knowing how to pull this out and where to include it in your report.

ACA Simplified/Paradigm Shift Mock Exams

Many of you have probably heard of the ACA Simplified or newly named Paradigm Shift ACA Case Study mock exam pack . I did actually get these for my ACA Case Study exam, where I was given five mock exams. It definitely was not needed to pass but I do think it helped. I did not practice any of these but did read through the mark schemes, understood the calculation workings and took these into the exam with me. Given there are so many mocks, I made a quick reference guide for each mock so I could easily identify the relevant mock.

The reason I wanted the mocks is because I found for my case study Beal that the Requirement 2 and 3 calculations were quite difficult. In all honesty, even though I love Maths and know I am good at it, I did always find these tricky. These mock exams give examples of potential calculations that could come up as well as model appendices to address these. The mocks were therefore helpful in this sense.

The mocks were actually quite similar to the real exam in terms of the scenarios that came up. Such as an increase in the magazine price for one of the requirements. I was able to apply how the calculation was done in the mocks to the real exam. This is likely to be the case given the AI indicates a limited number of potential scenarios and I was given five mocks.

You do need to bear in mind that many of the marks/”diamonds” for the real exam will be based on the information given in the real exam . This of course cannot be predicted and so you cannot just copy the mock answers. The same exam will never come up so application is required and given the time pressure, you do need to know what you are doing. That being said, you can probably copy the business issues and wider context points.

If you have other Advanced Level exams to revise for, try not to get too carried away with the ACA Case Study. SBM also helps with Requirement 1 as there is an overlap with the performance analysis.

I hope this helps and good luck!

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Case Study: UTMB Group Improves Content Discovery and Collaboration With Moments Lab AI-Powered Cloud Media Hub

By SVG Staff Monday, May 13, 2024 - 10:20 am Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

Based in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France, UTMB Group is the organization behind the UTMB World Series, a premier global trail running circuit with 40+ events taking place across Asia, Oceania, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It is also the only place where runners can begin their quest to the HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc, where the prestigious UTMB World Series Finals are held in the OCC, CCC, and UTMB races. Inaugurated in 2003, the UTMB race stands as a beacon of trail running excellence with an awe-inspiring course around the iconic Mont-Blanc — traversing Italy, Switzerland, and France — covering a distance of 171 kilometers with a staggering 10,000 meters of positive elevation gain.

“The HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc is the most incredible and competitive trail running event,” explains Coralie Batté, head of brand and communication at UTMB Group . “Each year, the best athletes meet in Chamonix, and more than 10,000 runners participate in one of our eight races, including the UTMB World Series Finals.”

Through the UTMB Live streaming service, and content shared on social media channels, people can follow their favorite athletes and share in the breathtaking beauty of the landscapes as runners cross the finish line in Chamonix.

The UTMB charts a stunning course around the iconic Mont-Blanc, traversing Italy, Switzerland, and France.

Simplifying the Allocation of Media Content

UTMB Group accumulates a large collection of media as it documents each race — as many as 2,000 photos from a single event. Many of the images and videos did not have adequate metadata, and the UTMB Group team spent significant time properly tagging new media files to ensure that content could be found by partners and stakeholders. Finding the correct image or video clip for a sponsor or partner was often a time-consuming process. Moreover, UTMB Group had to manually review the footage to ensure the presence of sponsor logos. This workflow was not sustainable nor scalable given the large volume of media across all 40+ events and its small content team.

UTMB Group needed an easy and efficient way to access, store, manage, and share its media content with sponsors and athletes.

“Our goal was to modernize our media management and create a media marketplace where partners, athletes and our content team could easily — and independently —  find the content they were searching for,” says Batté.

Aside from being user-friendly, the solution needed to be deployed quickly. With several upcoming races, UTMB Group wanted to move forward and bring its new media asset management solution online as soon as possible to enable simpler sharing of content for improved brand awareness and athlete and partner relations.

Swiftly Deploying a Media Asset Management Solution

Moments Lab’s Cloud Media Hub with Multimodal AI indexing, and Media Marketplace met UTMB Group’s requirements for an efficient and centralized space to store and work with their media assets.

The deployment was quick. During the implementation process, Moments Lab’s team set up five sponsor media collections per event.

“We had a lot to do in a short amount of time,” says Philippe Petitpont, co-founder and CEO of Moments Lab . “Within three days, we established about 15 events and 85 media collections with visuals for UTMB Group, which is an unprecedented speed, especially considering that none of the media content was properly tagged.”

Each media collection was created with specific AI detection parameters, including the year, event, race, and logo to ensure content is easy to find.

The Cloud Media Hub and Media Marketplace contain all original files and proxies. UTMB Group can use Moments Lab’s live photo media upload capability to provide partners and athletes with faster access to content.

Winning the Race for Faster Content Search Experiences

The Cloud Media Hub is powered by revolutionary multimodal AI indexing technology. Photographers and Videographers can automatically or manually upload shots of the trail runs to the Cloud Media Hub from anywhere. AI indexing then scans the media and detects athletes and sponsor logos. Utilizing AI, UTMB Group can instantly tag media with the names of athletes leveraging automatic facial recognition technology, optical character recognition (OCR) for sponsor logos, and speech-to-text transcription for video interviews. The result is infinitely more powerful search experiences.

AI indexing scans UTMB Group’s media and detects individual athletes and sponsor logos.

“Moments Lab’s Cloud Media Hub transforms our workflow, reducing our production times and improving collaboration,” adds Batté. “We can now find media assets in just a few seconds.”

Boosting Content Engagement With the Media Marketplace

The UTMB Group team manages the partner and sponsor collections folders in the Media Hub and the validation of content access via the Media Marketplace. Through the Media Marketplace, UTMB Group can efficiently manage access to photos and know when a particular partner has hit their quota. Sponsors and partners have the autonomy to log in to the Media Hub and access their designated collection.

UTMB Group sponsors and partners have autonomous access to designated media collections.

In addition, UTMB Group’s social media team uses the Media Hub to search for, select, and download images and video clips for use on its channels, including Instagram where it currently engages with more than 400,000 followers.

Batté explains, “The Media Marketplace enables us to easily publish relevant videos or photos on our channels and share content with partners and sponsors. They love how simple it is to view and download approved content.”

Increasing Workflow Efficiency, Sponsor Satisfaction, and ROI

Since deploying Moments Lab’s cloud and AI-based platform, UTMB Group has successfully stored, managed, and shared media content for its 2022 and 2023 races. The team uploaded close to 2,000 photos to the Cloud Media Hub from the 2023 UTMB Mont-Blanc event alone.

Adopting Moments Lab’s solution saves UTMB Group significant time while increasing their engagement with sponsors and partners. Prior to using Moments Lab, UTMB Group manually scanned about 1,000 photos per event to identify and tag sponsors. This process took the UTMB Group team eight hours at a minimum. Now, the same work is completed in about 15 minutes.

“A time saving of 97% on manual photo tagging is just incredible. We’re already seeing a huge return on investment from being able to store, manage, and share our race images much more efficiently. Enabling our partners and sponsors to independently download footage and shots from anywhere and rapidly activate their marketing and social media campaigns is a game-changer. Moments Lab’s solutions propel our business on a path toward future growth and collaboration,” says Batté.

In 2024, UTMB will oversee 42 incredible trail running events in Asia, Oceania, Europe, Africa and the Americas. Leveraging the Moments Lab solution, UTMB Group can share every captivating race moment with the world.

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Study Suggests Genetics as a Cause, Not Just a Risk, for Some Alzheimer’s

People with two copies of the gene variant APOE4 are almost certain to get Alzheimer’s, say researchers, who proposed a framework under which such patients could be diagnosed years before symptoms.

By Pam Belluck

Scientists are proposing a new way of understanding the genetics of Alzheimer’s that would mean that up to a fifth of patients would be considered to have a genetically caused form of the disease.

Currently, the vast majority of Alzheimer’s cases do not have a clearly identified cause. The new designation, proposed in a study published Monday, could broaden the scope of efforts to develop treatments, including gene therapy, and affect the design of clinical trials.

It could also mean that hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone could, if they chose, receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s before developing any symptoms of cognitive decline, although there currently are no treatments for people at that stage.

The new classification would make this type of Alzheimer’s one of the most common genetic disorders in the world, medical experts said.

“This reconceptualization that we’re proposing affects not a small minority of people,” said Dr. Juan Fortea, an author of the study and the director of the Sant Pau Memory Unit in Barcelona, Spain. “Sometimes we say that we don’t know the cause of Alzheimer’s disease,” but, he said, this would mean that about 15 to 20 percent of cases “can be tracked back to a cause, and the cause is in the genes.”

The idea involves a gene variant called APOE4. Scientists have long known that inheriting one copy of the variant increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, and that people with two copies, inherited from each parent, have vastly increased risk.

The new study , published in the journal Nature Medicine, analyzed data from over 500 people with two copies of APOE4, a significantly larger pool than in previous studies. The researchers found that almost all of those patients developed the biological pathology of Alzheimer’s, and the authors say that two copies of APOE4 should now be considered a cause of Alzheimer’s — not simply a risk factor.

The patients also developed Alzheimer’s pathology relatively young, the study found. By age 55, over 95 percent had biological markers associated with the disease. By 65, almost all had abnormal levels of a protein called amyloid that forms plaques in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. And many started developing symptoms of cognitive decline at age 65, younger than most people without the APOE4 variant.

“The critical thing is that these individuals are often symptomatic 10 years earlier than other forms of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Reisa Sperling, a neurologist at Mass General Brigham in Boston and an author of the study.

She added, “By the time they are picked up and clinically diagnosed, because they’re often younger, they have more pathology.”

People with two copies, known as APOE4 homozygotes, make up 2 to 3 percent of the general population, but are an estimated 15 to 20 percent of people with Alzheimer’s dementia, experts said. People with one copy make up about 15 to 25 percent of the general population, and about 50 percent of Alzheimer’s dementia patients.

The most common variant is called APOE3, which seems to have a neutral effect on Alzheimer’s risk. About 75 percent of the general population has one copy of APOE3, and more than half of the general population has two copies.

Alzheimer’s experts not involved in the study said classifying the two-copy condition as genetically determined Alzheimer’s could have significant implications, including encouraging drug development beyond the field’s recent major focus on treatments that target and reduce amyloid.

Dr. Samuel Gandy, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Mount Sinai in New York, who was not involved in the study, said that patients with two copies of APOE4 faced much higher safety risks from anti-amyloid drugs.

When the Food and Drug Administration approved the anti-amyloid drug Leqembi last year, it required a black-box warning on the label saying that the medication can cause “serious and life-threatening events” such as swelling and bleeding in the brain, especially for people with two copies of APOE4. Some treatment centers decided not to offer Leqembi, an intravenous infusion, to such patients.

Dr. Gandy and other experts said that classifying these patients as having a distinct genetic form of Alzheimer’s would galvanize interest in developing drugs that are safe and effective for them and add urgency to current efforts to prevent cognitive decline in people who do not yet have symptoms.

“Rather than say we have nothing for you, let’s look for a trial,” Dr. Gandy said, adding that such patients should be included in trials at younger ages, given how early their pathology starts.

Besides trying to develop drugs, some researchers are exploring gene editing to transform APOE4 into a variant called APOE2, which appears to protect against Alzheimer’s. Another gene-therapy approach being studied involves injecting APOE2 into patients’ brains.

The new study had some limitations, including a lack of diversity that might make the findings less generalizable. Most patients in the study had European ancestry. While two copies of APOE4 also greatly increase Alzheimer’s risk in other ethnicities, the risk levels differ, said Dr. Michael Greicius, a neurologist at Stanford University School of Medicine who was not involved in the research.

“One important argument against their interpretation is that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in APOE4 homozygotes varies substantially across different genetic ancestries,” said Dr. Greicius, who cowrote a study that found that white people with two copies of APOE4 had 13 times the risk of white people with two copies of APOE3, while Black people with two copies of APOE4 had 6.5 times the risk of Black people with two copies of APOE3.

“This has critical implications when counseling patients about their ancestry-informed genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” he said, “and it also speaks to some yet-to-be-discovered genetics and biology that presumably drive this massive difference in risk.”

Under the current genetic understanding of Alzheimer’s, less than 2 percent of cases are considered genetically caused. Some of those patients inherited a mutation in one of three genes and can develop symptoms as early as their 30s or 40s. Others are people with Down syndrome, who have three copies of a chromosome containing a protein that often leads to what is called Down syndrome-associated Alzheimer’s disease .

Dr. Sperling said the genetic alterations in those cases are believed to fuel buildup of amyloid, while APOE4 is believed to interfere with clearing amyloid buildup.

Under the researchers’ proposal, having one copy of APOE4 would continue to be considered a risk factor, not enough to cause Alzheimer’s, Dr. Fortea said. It is unusual for diseases to follow that genetic pattern, called “semidominance,” with two copies of a variant causing the disease, but one copy only increasing risk, experts said.

The new recommendation will prompt questions about whether people should get tested to determine if they have the APOE4 variant.

Dr. Greicius said that until there were treatments for people with two copies of APOE4 or trials of therapies to prevent them from developing dementia, “My recommendation is if you don’t have symptoms, you should definitely not figure out your APOE status.”

He added, “It will only cause grief at this point.”

Finding ways to help these patients cannot come soon enough, Dr. Sperling said, adding, “These individuals are desperate, they’ve seen it in both of their parents often and really need therapies.”

Pam Belluck is a health and science reporter, covering a range of subjects, including reproductive health, long Covid, brain science, neurological disorders, mental health and genetics. More about Pam Belluck

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• HMRC rejects ‘brightline’ test for furnished holiday lets (FHLs)

Author: ICAEW Insights

Published: 13 May 2024

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At the Spring Budget 2024, the Government announced that the special tax regime for FHLs will be abolished  from April 2025. Before the FHL rules were introduced, the boundary between property letting and trading for a short-term holiday rental business had been in doubt. This caused uncertainty for taxpayers, and a number of cases were heard on the subject. 

In a letter to HMRC, ICAEW’s Tax Faculty called on the Government to consider introducing a ‘brightline’ test . The test had been proposed by the Office of Tax Simplification in 2022 in the event that the FHL regime was abolished. The Tax Faculty believes that a brightline test in the legislation will make it clear whether property letting activities qualify as a trade. It may also be helpful for inheritance tax (IHT) purposes in establishing whether business property relief (BPR) is due.  

In its response, HMRC has rejected ICAEW’s call for a brightline test . HMRC believes that the test would have downsides. For example, it could mean that more activities would be considered as trades. HMRC confirmed that whether an activity is trading or property letting will be determined on the facts, with reference to the guidance provided by the courts. HMRC does not anticipate that the abolition of the FHL regime will affect the application of BPR. HMRC’s view, as expressed at IHTM25278 , is that FHLs will in general not qualify for BPR.  

ICAEW pointed out that its members are keen to understand if and how transitional provisions will apply in respect of capital allowances and losses. HMRC responded that details of the transitional provisions will be set out in draft legislation and accompanying documents soon.  

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