ACCA pulls remote exams for most students, saying AI cheating has hit a "tipping point"

December 2025 — The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants is ending remote exams for most of its students because AI-assisted cheating has become too difficult to police, The Guardian reported. Here's what changes, what it costs, and what went wrong.

Cost and outcome (as of Dec. 29, 2025)

Outcome: remote on-demand exam tokens stopped being sold from Nov. 4, 2025, and all session exams move to centres from March 2026, except where ACCA has no centre. (ACCA)
Cost: not disclosed. Tokens already bought can be used until they expire. (ACCA)
ACCA's reason: "We're seeing the sophistication of [cheating] systems outpacing what can be put in, [in] terms of safeguards," Brand said. (The Guardian)
Status: remote exams stay only in countries without an exam centre, "for the foreseeable future." (ACCA)

What changes

ACCA, which has almost 260,000 members and more than half a million students, will stop letting students take online exams "in all but exceptional circumstances," The Guardian reported.

ACCA's own FAQ sets out the detail. "As technology evolves, we have concerns around the ongoing security of remote exams," it says. Students can no longer buy remote on-demand tokens from Nov. 4, 2025, unless they are in a country with no exam centre. Session-based exams will all be held in centres from March 2026, with the same exception.

ACCA runs exam centres in more than 90 countries, the FAQ says. The change covers every ACCA-delivered qualification except the Professional Diploma in Sustainability, which stays remote everywhere. Students who take a remote exam from a country other than the one they booked will have the result nullified, with no refund.

"For the foreseeable future, we will only offer remote exams in countries which have no centre provision," the FAQ says. ACCA adds that "the vast majority of students already choose to take their exams in centre."

Why ACCA says it had to

Remote testing began during the Covid pandemic, so students could keep qualifying during lockdowns, The Guardian reported. ACCA concluded online tests had become too difficult to police "given the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) tools available to students," according to the paper.

Brand told the Financial Times that ACCA had worked "intensively" to fight cheating, but "people who want to do bad things are probably working at a quicker pace," The Guardian reported. She said the rise of AI tools had pushed cheating to a "tipping point."

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

The wider problem

Cheating on professional tests predates generative AI. In 2022, the UK's Financial Reporting Council said exam cheating was a "live" issue at the biggest firms, and EY agreed to pay a record $100 million to U.S. regulators over claims that dozens of employees cheated on an ethics exam, The Guardian reported.

Not every body has gone the same way. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales said last year that reports of cheating were still increasing, but it still permits some exams to be sat online, the paper said.

ACCA's FAQ says misconduct is "taken extremely seriously" and that any student caught "risks being removed from the student register."

What went wrong

Safeguards fell behind. ACCA's chief executive said cheating systems were outpacing what ACCA could put in place.
Honest students lose an option. The FAQ acknowledges "some students prefer to take their exam at home" and that the news "will therefore come as a disappointment."
The reason isn't on ACCA's own page. The FAQ cites only evolving technology; the AI explanation came through the press, not the FAQ.
What we don't know yet: how many AI cheating cases ACCA found, what the switch costs students or ACCA, and whether remote exams return.

Our follow-up question for ACCA

How many cases of AI-assisted cheating in remote exams did ACCA detect before making this change?

Sources

ACCA, “FAQs on the limited availability of remote exams.” accaglobal.com
The Guardian, Mark Sweney, “UK accounting body to halt remote exams amid AI cheating,” Dec. 29, 2025. theguardian.com

Disclosure: [not in copy] Editor placeholder