Frequently asked questions

No. The Council is a private industry certification body. Its certifications are industry credentials. They are not government licensing, they are not required by law, and holding one does not confer any regulatory status. Any organisation claiming otherwise on the Council's behalf is misrepresenting it.

ISO/IEC 17024, the international standard for bodies certifying persons: independence of examination from preparation, a documented competency framework, a defensible cut score, and an appeals process independent of the assessor. That is a design claim about how the scheme is built, not a conformity claim, and it is never to be read as certification or endorsement under the standard.

Two certifications, both in finance and accounting: the Fundamentals grade for a professional's own AI-assisted work, and the Professional grade for the person who sets the terms on which a finance function uses AI. Ahead of them sits the free AI Literacy Certificate, the awareness tier. The Council started with one discipline on purpose, and will add others as it can examine them to the same standard.

Fundamentals if you use AI in your own finance or accounting work and want to show you can verify what it produces and answer for it. Professional if you decide how a finance function uses AI, which controls change when a model sits inside them, what is disclosed about a model-produced estimate, and what is shown to an auditor or a committee. Neither requires the other. Both certify using AI competently inside the profession, and neither certifies assurance of anybody else’s AI system. Every credential page states who it is for and who it is not.

Yes — the AI Literacy Certificate. It is free, unproctored, machine-marked, and assesses working understanding rather than professional competence. It is not a certification and never carries the "Certified" prefix, and it will not become payable. Most people should start there.

Not yet. Enrolment is open for the first credentials and the first sittings follow. Every credential appears on the public register at the moment of issue, so any claim can be checked there; a claim that does not verify against the register is false, and can be reported through the contact page.

Two years, then revalidation — and an active membership throughout, without which it expires at the end of the term. A lifetime credential in a field changing this fast would misrepresent current competence. Withdrawn and expired credentials remain on the public register with their status shown.

Every credential carries a unique identifier of the form AIAC-2026-000001 and a public register entry, so a claim can be checked without contacting the holder — the lookup is live on the verify page. The holder’s name appears only where the holder has consented to listing; without that consent the register confirms the credential exists and is in force but withholds the name, so a holder who wants to be verifiable by name should consent to being listed.

US$695 for a certification examination, with the first year of membership included. Membership then renews at US$165 a year, or US$275 for a two-year term. The AI Literacy Certificate is free. Nothing is payable until you register for a sitting, and there is nothing else to buy. The examination fee includes the Council’s self-paced video course.

To sit, no. To keep a credential in force, yes — the first year comes with any paid examination, and if membership lapses the credential expires. Members pay a reduced rate on further examinations and on revalidation; that rate publishes with the rest of the fee schedule. What membership never buys is standing: within the individual plan, grade follows the credential you hold, never the amount you have paid.

Two bands, by how far you are from your sitting. 15 or more days out, you can move the date free of charge or cancel for a 75% refund — moving it keeps the whole fee, so it is the better option. Fewer than 15 days out, neither. A delivered examination is not refundable because the result was a fail — the service was the assessment, not the outcome. Where something outside your control stopped you sitting, exceptional circumstances are considered on evidence, up to 2 days after a sitting you missed but never once a result has issued. Where the Council cancels, you choose a free transfer or a full refund. And if the consumer law where you live gives you better rights than any of this, that law applies.

Remotely proctored, taking no more than two hours, and built around a deployment the candidate has not seen before. Format varies by track and is fixed when that track’s syllabus is issued: scenario work is the core of every paper, and may be combined with other applied question types. Candidates are assessed on what they do with the deployment — scoping the system, prioritising the applicable requirements, and judging what evidence would be sufficient. It is not a test of whether you can recall what a framework says.

Yes, once. A credential carries the holder’s name, so identity is verified once before any assessment is sat: a photograph of a government-issued identity document and a short face check, handled by a specialist verification provider. The Council receives the outcome of that check and the name as it appears on the document — it never holds the document images or the biometric data. The provider that does holds them for two years and then deletes them, or sooner if the candidate asks. That verified name is the name the credential and the register entry carry, in place of the name given at sign-up. Registering and booking do not wait on verification; sitting does. It applies to every assessment the Council marks, the free AI Literacy assessment included, and to candidates who registered before the check existed. A credential is a statement about a named person; the Council establishes that name rather than assuming it.

However suits you. The examination fee includes the Council’s self-paced video course, and using it is optional. Every credential page publishes its examination domains today, and each full syllabus is published before that credential’s examination window; self-study against the published materials and an employer programme are routes of equal standing. No route affects the fee, the marking standard, or what an assessor sees.

Yes, and it comes with the examination. The fee includes access to the Council’s self-paced online video course for that grade, taken in the candidate portal in your own time, with no instructor and no timetable. It is built from the published syllabus and never from live examination content. Using it is optional and confers no advantage in marking. Nobody who writes or delivers the course has any part in setting or marking the examination, assessors never see how a candidate prepared, and pass rates by preparation route are published each year, the Council’s own included. The free AI Literacy Certificate has a free video course of its own in the portal, and needs none of it to pass.

Both, in that order — on every examination the Council marks. The free AI Literacy assessment is the exception and is machine-marked with no human assessor, which is one of the reasons it is not a certification. On an examination, every script is first marked against the published rubric by an AI assessor, which produces a provisional mark and flags divergence from the rubric. A human assessor then marks it independently, and a result is issued only when both marks concur; where they diverge, the human assessor reviews the divergence and the human determination is final. Neither assessor is arbitrary — the Certification Panel appoints human assessors against defined competence criteria and approves the AI assessor before it is used, and can withdraw either. No result is issued on the automated mark alone, and no fail, suspension or withdrawal is ever made without a human assessor.

You may re-sit after 21 days, up to three attempts in twelve months, on a different form. A re-sit is charged: US$348 if you hold a current membership at the time, US$695 if not — the first attempt was delivered and marked, so it is not refunded, but a member is not charged twice over for the same paper. Results are reported as pass or fail with domain-level feedback rather than a percentage or a rank, because a percentage invites comparison between forms that are not comparable.

Request it at registration and it is arranged in advance — extra time, breaks, assistive technology, or an alternative format, under the equal treatment policy. An adjustment changes the conditions of the examination and never the standard it assesses, which is why an adjusted pass is an ordinary pass and is not marked on the register. A refused adjustment can be appealed.

Yes. Appeals are decided by people who were not involved in the original assessment, against the published competency framework rather than against an opinion. The appeals and complaints policy sets out how to raise one and what timeframes apply.

No. Each credential names the framework or regulation it is mapped to — ISO/IEC 42001, the EU AI Act, the GDPR, the MAS instruments, DORA, and the others named per credential. Curriculum mapping indicates alignment of learning content with published frameworks. It does not constitute endorsement by, or certification under, any standards organisation or regulator. Anyone claiming to be "certified under" or "endorsed by" a standards body is describing something that does not exist — those bodies publish standards, they do not endorse anyone.

That depends on employers. No credentials have been issued and there are no holders, so there is no employer recognition to point to yet. What the Council can state is what the credential attests to: a published competency framework, an examination a candidate cannot pass by having bought a course, and a public register an employer can check.