The world’s largest accounting body is to stop students being allowed to take exams remotely to crack down on a rise in cheating on tests that underpin professional qualifications.

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), which has almost 260,000 members, has said that from March it will stop allowing students to take online exams in all but exceptional circumstances.

“We’re seeing the sophistication of [cheating] systems outpacing what can be put in, [in] terms of safeguards,” Helen Brand, the chief executive of the ACCA, said in an interview with the Financial Times.

Remote testing was introduced during the Covid pandemic to allow students to continue to be able to qualify at a time when lockdowns prevented in-person exam assessment.

In 2022, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the UK’s accounting and auditing industry regulator, said that cheating in professional exams was a “live” issue at Britain’s biggest companies.

A number of multimillion-dollar fines have been issued to large auditing and accounting companies around the world over cheating scandals in tests.

The FRC’s investigation found that instances of cheating also included some tier-one auditors, a category comprising the “big four” accountants – KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY – along with Mazars, Grant Thornton and BDO.

In 2022, EY agreed to pay a record $100m (£74m) to US regulators over claims that dozens of its employees cheated on an ethics exam and that the company then misled investigators.

The ACCA said it had concluded that online tests have become too difficult to police, given the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) tools available to students.

Brand said the ACCA, which has more than half a million students, had worked “intensively” to combat cheating but “people who want to do bad things are probably working at a quicker pace”.

She added that the rapid rise of technology, led by AI tools, had pushed the issue of cheating to a “tipping point”.

Last year, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), which also trains accountants around the world, said reports of cheating were still increasing.

However, the ICAEW still permits some exams to be sat online.

“There are very few high-stakes examinations now that are allowing [remote invigilation],” Brand said.