Shehnaaz Suleman

Education

After completing her articles in Durban (2010 – 2013), Shehnaaz qualified as a CA(SA) and went on to spend 6 years at a major audit firm as a key member of the technical accounting team. She provided accounting guidance and audit support within the financial services sector on financial instruments as well as other technical topics. During that time she worked with major banks and travelled all across the African continent providing IFRS training and assisting teams with technical accounting queries. Shehnaaz chaired the SA IFRS 9 Centre of Excellence which was an internal forum for key stakeholders within the financial services industry to share information and international trends. As part of her time in this role, she was seconded to a major bank bank where she assisted the central impairments team with monthly finance processes.

During 2018, she moved on to another big 4 audit firm, where she was a senior manager in their Financial Resources Group (FRG) that provided technical accounting support to major banks and insurers across South Africa, as well as the UK.

In 2019, she embarked on a new adventure within a listed multinational insurance group within South Africa, as a technical accounting specialist. In this role she was involved in assisting with accounting queries and projects across the group, as well as drafting and reviewing financial statements for different entities within the group. In addition, Shehnaaz was also involved in calculating expected credit losses, building IFRS 9 and hedge accounting disclosures. After helping the Group finalise year end results, Shehnaaz decided to return to her passion in the profession, technical accounting with a specific focus on financial services. She joined the BDO SA FS team in October 2019 and has really taken on to the firm’s values of “people helping people achieve their dreams.” She has made an impact on her team and has won over the hearts of many clients, both in and out of the financial services sector.

Shehnaaz is responsible for establishing a technical accounting group (TAG) that forms part of the larger BDO Financial Services team and focuses on providing both advisory and audit support to financial services clients both locally and globally. Under her supervision and leadership, this team has grown substantially and more than doubled in size since its inception in October 2019. As part of this role, Shehnaaz represents BDO on a number of BDO FS Global forums as well as local industry groups across the financial services industries in South Africa. She has recently been appointed to represent BDO Global as a representative at key industry forums globally on financial instruments', together with our BDO Global Head of IFRS. As a result, she is the direct technical accounting link between the local and global FS environment.

She has used her insights gained from participating on the above forums to develop content and present IFRS training for clients and staff across SA, in other African countries as well as part of BDO Global. During her time at BDO she has driven key initiatives by developing content, co-ordinating with local and global FS teams across marketing and technical and presented training on existing and new accounting standards. Most recently, Shehnaaz successfully launched the Africa FS Centre of Excellence. She has set up a structure to engage with BDO Member firms in each country across Africa by cluster (North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa and Central Africa). She is working closely with BDO Global to create awareness, build the African network, increase support and transfer skills to all FS teams across the BDO African footprint.

Shehnaaz has also been instrumental in working with the BDO FS Technology team to build applications to be used to automate any routine processes within the technical accounting space. With her input, FST have successfully developed a tool to be used as part of the AFS review process (called iAFS). In addition to this, she has been instrumental in publishing strategic thought leadership (podcasts and videos).

Qualifications

• Chartered Accountant South Africa

Other

She is also a foodie, who loves cheesy jokes and reality tv shows.