- Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW)
- Insitute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland (ICAS) or
- Insitute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartered_Accountant).
Chartered Accountants have established such a reputation for competence and integrity that members of the ACCA and CIMA recently applied to use the chartered description, and began to call themselves chartered accountants.
In recent years, other accounting organisations have begun to spring up, some with little or no formal training or exams. As it is so easy to become a member of these organisations, their membership has become very large. Some members of these organisations have now started calling themselves chartered accountants.
Other Accountants have called themselves Certified Public Accountants (CPA). Note that the CPA is only a US qualification, irrelevant in the UK
To add to the confusion, unqualified practitioners, bookkeepers and technicians can also call themselves accountants
How can you tell if your accountant is a genuine Chartered Accountant?
Chartered Accountants belonging to one of the ICA institutes (ICAEW, ICAI and ICAS) usually use capital letters in their title (Chartered Accountant; to indicate a title), whereas members of other bodies often use lower case (chartered accountant; to indicate a description). However, the only sure-fire way to know is to ask of which body your accountant is a member.