From Universiti Utara Malaysia

From University of Malaya

From UOW Malaysia KDU University College

By UOW Malaysia KDU

The Accounting Passion Discovery Challenge (APDC) 2021 is the very first virtual accounting competition organized by the Business Club of UOW Malaysia KDU Penang University College. The two-day virtual competition held on the 4th and 5^th of September 2021 is a team-based competition consisting of four members per team. The aim and objectives of APDC 2021 are to encourage participants to discover their accounting passion and knowledge through event challenges; to connect with professional accounting organizations during the interactive sessions; and lastly to serve as an avenue for participants to showcase their accounting talents throughout the competition. We are proud to have gathered a group of bright accounting undergraduates from 12 public and private tertiary education institutions from all over Malaysia to participate in this virtual accounting event. The competition began with a preliminary assessment hosted throughout the month of July to select the eligible teams to advance to the next round. APDC2021 managed to select the top 16 teams to join our two-day main event in September.

The long-awaited main event has finally kickstarted on 4^th of September 2021. Day one of the event consisted of two challenges and a speaker session. The first challenge titled, “On the Fence” was a buzzer session where opposing teams were allocated to their ‘breakout rooms’ to compete among each other regarding accounting topics covering financial reporting, management accounting, taxation, audit and assurance; and financial management. This challenge was later followed by a speaker session with the topic title “Riding the Fintech Wave” presented by Ms. Yvonne Lai from MICPA. The speaker shared on many new insights on financial in the future economic environment. The second challenge “Many Hands Make Light Work” began after the speaker sharing session. This challenge required the participants to come up with innovative business ideas during the post-COVID-19 pandemic period and present their ideas to a panel of professional judges coming from renowned accounting firms.

More exciting activities were held on the second day of the event consisting of trivia game sessions, speaker sessions, career booth sessions and the final challenge. The trivia game session was a light activity to soothe the competitive mood from the first day. This session entailed having the participants to correctly guess the accounting terminologies that were drawn by the facilitators. After the game session, the second speaker of the event, Mr. Megat Solleh, representing ACCA shared on “Attributes of Accounting Graduates Towards the New Working Environment during and after the COVID-19 Impact”. It was a fruitful sharing session as the participants learned useful tips on how to get ready and adapt to the new working requirements amid the pandemic. Next, participants were given the opportunity to meet with corporate representatives from six professional accounting organizations which included ACCA Malaysia, MICPA, MIA, Deloitte Malaysia, Grant Thornton Malaysia PLT and PwC Malaysia during the career booth breakout session. The participants were extremely active and raised several practical questions to the corporate representatives.  With the sharing and interactive sessions over, participants headed for the third and final challenge aptly named as “Needle in A Haystack”.

The challenge was geared at evaluating the academic and practical knowledge of all the teams in their audit and assurance knowledge as they were required to analyze a real-world case study and perform presentations to judges who are professional auditors from well-known audit firms.  All the 16 participating teams were outstanding throughout all these challenges. However, there were three teams that stood out and delivered an exceptional performance therefore emerging as the winners of APDC 2021. The top three winning teams are Team 96°C (Champion) from Universiti Utara Malaysia, Team BADS (1^st Runner Up) from University of Malaya and Team The Night Is Still Young (2^nd Runner Up) from UOW Malaysia KDU University College. APCD2021 would like to extend our heartiest congratulations to the winning team and all the participants in this awesome event.