As a chartered accountant, maintaining your CPD will be a key ingredient in keeping your career on a firm upward trajectory, and I’m sure that proper Continued Professional Development will be mandated by your Institute.

But what else can you do to turbo-charge your career?

One solution is to burnish your credentials by widening and deepening your skills base since, professionally speaking, the more strings to your bow, the better. Doing so will give you a valuable competitive advantage.

Even better, you can do this working in the Caribbean or Bermuda.

The fact is that modern firms think globally – and so should you. Multinational companies expect key staff to have successfully undertaken at least one expatriate assignment. So to compete effectively and fulfil your true potential, you need to think globally too.

Take a moment to think of the benefits of such a step. Compared to a colleague who stays put after qualifying – working on the same clients each year, moving up half a notch on the ladder – you can instead put yourself in a position where you will benefit from first-class training and international client-facing experience designed specifically to develop your expertise in financial services, even if you haven’t had exposure to the sector before.

Such an initiative will put you into an entirely different professional bracket compared to where you probably are now.

Whether it’s Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, the leading offshore accountancy firms provide a wide array of customised internal and external training courses, presentations and seminars for the new starters who arrive each year.

Their aim is to educate you in multiple areas, including:

  • Learning about financial services entities such as hedge funds, insurance management companies and banks: what are they, how do they operate, what are the risks?
  • Learning about the international/US reporting and regulatory framework
  • SEC technical training for those working on US Securities and Exchange Commission clients
  • Soft skills and leadership training (business, coaching, project management, time management)
  • Training in your new firm’s audit approach and methodology
  • Training in how to use dedicated cutting-edge technology and software
  • Inductions to help you settle into your new living environment abroad
  • Additional development resources, including online courses and webinars
  • Many firms also encourage you with further study of your own (e.g. CFA)

The idea is that such training gets you up to speed quickly and efficiently in order to cope with the demands of working on international financial service companies and institutions once busy season starts.

However, beyond the personal satisfaction gained by stretching yourself, the main advantage to you is that – once learnt – this training and expertise remains with you. Forever.

It’s a competitive advantage that differentiates you from colleagues who proved less ambitious once they got their hands on the ACA/CA/CPA designation.

As well as making you more employable to different organisations and institutions around the world– because you now enjoy a wider skills base than you did previously – this training and experience can be successfully leveraged in future salary negotiations.

And it’s 100% free!

Looked at this way, perhaps you can’t afford not to take up such an opportunity.

If you are a lawyer or accountant and interested in working in the Bermuda/Caribbean region, visit our jobs portal to see the latest vacancies. Our site also includes a downloadable All You Need to Know guide which will tell you all you need to know about living and working offshore.