If you are asked by a client, their lender, or any other party to provide an ‘accountant’s letter’ or some other form of confirmation of your client’s finances or ability to pay, exercise a high degree of caution. Providing an accountant’s letter may shift some or all risk of a credit assessment from the lender or other party to the accountant. This means there are significant risks, including potential liability, attached to providing these documents.

To assist our members in handling client requests for an accountant’s letter or similar confirmations, we collaborated with CPA Australia and the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA) to create the Accountant’s Letter Toolkit.

This toolkit outlines the Professional Bodies’ joint recommendation on accountant’s letters – which is to decline to provide them – and highlights the risks and considerations involved. Should you choose to support your client by responding to the lender or other third party, the toolkit offers practical guidance on how to manage the risks without inadvertently breaching your professional obligations or indemnity requirements. It also contains useful templates including a sample letter to decline the request, a sample Accountant’s Letter Template for specific situations should you choose to proceed and a working paper file checklist.

This toolkit has recently been updated to:

• reflect revisions in the 2025 Banking Code of Practice (the Code) which commences 28 February 2025. The Professional Bodies welcome this update to the Code, in particular clause 78 which now states “We will not ask a third party (such as your accountant) to certify that you can repay the Loan”. This is a position we have advocated for with banks and other lenders for many years.
• clarify some of the wording based on member feedback.

Members receive a broad range of requests from clients for statements to provide information to lenders, other financiers, lessors, real estate agents or government agencies on matters such as the client’s ongoing solvency, future earnings, sustainable revenue streams, asset usage, or loan servicing capability. Requests may be in the form of an accountant’s letter, reference, confirmation, statement, certification, verification, declaration or something else. While the Accountant’s Letter Toolkit has been written primarily to respond to requests from lenders, the same principles can be applied to analogous situations, so you can tailor the templates to suit the specific circumstances of the request.

Contact CA ANZ’s Professional Standards and Ethics team if you would like assistance with this or any other professional and ethical matter.