Partner Article

A calculated success: Baldwins Assistant Manager named best in the world in accountancy exam

An Assistant Manager from one of the UK’s fastest-growing business advisory firms is celebrating after achieving the highest score in the world in an accountancy exam.

Samantha Welford, who has worked at Baldwins, a CogitalGroup company, since 2017 and is based at the firm’s Guisborough office, is studying for her ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) qualification to enable her to become a Chartered Certified Accountant.

In September, Samantha took the Applied Skills exam Audit and Assurance Paper, which has a pass rate of 36 per cent, and she achieved the highest score in the world of 85 per cent.

There were 12,925 entrants worldwide to the September paper, making Samantha’s accomplishment even more remarkable.

Fitting her studying around her full-time role, Samantha is incredibly pleased with her results. She said: “I am very proud of my achievement! It is something that I never envisaged I was capable of, but it has given me confidence to carry forward to future exams.

“When I am studying for my exams, I always try to consider how I can use what I have learnt to improve on what I do on a day-to-day basis. By completing this exam, I am continuing to make progress towards my goal of becoming a Chartered Certified Accountant. I hope that by completing the qualification, I will be securing my long-term future at Baldwins, and that it is enabling me to continue to grow and develop my role at the Guisborough office.”

To mark Samantha’s outstanding success, she was presented with a cheque of £1,000 from David Baldwin, owner of Baldwins, at the business’ Durham office launch event.

David said: “We are incredibly pleased for Samantha and it was important to us as a firm to highlight and celebrate her success at our recent event.

“At Baldwins we want to help our team develop and flourish within their specialist areas and it’s great to hear that Samantha’s hard work and dedication has paid off. I wish her the best of luck with the rest of her exams.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Harvey & Hugo .