Representatives from several VPOs, the Big Four accounting firms, and The Appraisal Foundation met last year with the SEC over the agency’s concerns about the state of the valuation profession. The SEC has criticized the BV profession as being too fragmented, with multiple credentials, different sets of standards, and a lack of consistency in qualifications and enforcement. A panel of key members of a working group dealing with this issue will give a progress update at the 2016 Summit of the Americas presented by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in Washington, D.C., April 3-5. Paul Beswick, former chief accountant at the SEC and now with Ernst & Young, will moderate the panel.

Preview: One of the panel members, Leigh Miller (Ernst & Young), tells BVWire that in addition to meeting with the SEC, the VPOs also met with the FASB, PCAOB, and other stakeholders. The result was a “renewed interest” in developing a “mandatory performance framework” as well as education and quality assurance around a new credential for professionals involved in valuation for financial reporting purposes. Since last summer, “a tremendous amount of work has been done to bring us to the point where we can begin public exposure of the framework and standards,” says Miller. The panel is also expected to discuss the regulatory environment. “I think there have been some very productive conversations with the regulators over these matters,” he says. “They continue to be supportive of what the valuation profession has been doing.”

Other sessions of interest to business valuation professionals include valuing the White House; valuation standards and convergence; property taxes; and a discussion on key influential trends, such as data and metrics and international valuation and measurement standards.

For more information on RICS’s 2016 Summit of the Americas and to register, click here.