Thought leadership stories

Glenn Ives (BMath ’84) will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the School of Accounting and Finance.

This award recognizes an outstanding alumnus who has made a lasting impact through their career achievements, community involvement, and ongoing support of the School and the University of Waterloo.

Amar Mahmoud, a doctoral candidate at the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF), has been named the 2025 recipient of the Warren Ober Award for Outstanding Teaching by Graduate Students.

The School of Accounting and Finance congratulates Professor Emeritus Ken Vetzal on receiving the 2024 Chris Daykin Prize from the International Actuarial Association.

The University of Waterloo’s Dean of Arts, Alexie Tcheuyap, visited a Student Venture Fund (SVF) class to engage with students and faculty about the program’s impact.

Recent rhetoric has emerged alleging that U.S. banks aren’t allowed to do business in Canada, which is untrue. U.S. banks have been operating in Canada for well over a century with 16 U.S.-based bank subsidiaries and branches managing $113 billion in assets here in the country.

James Thompson, SAF professor and co-director of the Computing and Financial Management program, breaks down how U.S. banks operate in Canada—challenging misconceptions and offering key insights on cross-border banking.

Researcher from the School of Accounting and Finance cautions that clear regulatory oversight is needed to protect investors.

The topic of sustainability is becoming increasingly popular in the investment world with sustainable investing creating a large global impact. This significant shift lead the School of Accounting and Finance's (SAF) Dr. Adam Vitalis and his co-authors to research how green labels attract investors to certain projects which can open the door to greenwashing. 

New government funding focuses on developing impactful course materials that integrate climate change adaptation into professional programs, with the ultimate goal of embedding sustainability into all SAF programs.

November marked a significant milestone in sustainability education as the University of Waterloo hosted the inaugural "Be the Future" conference for high school students, organized by the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF), the Faculty of Environment and Ontario DECA.

This unique event highlighted Waterloo's commitment to developing the next generation of leaders by inspiring students to explore the intersection of sustainability, social impact and economic growth.

SAF PhD student Jillian Adams is recognized for her achievements as the 2024 Faculty of Arts valedictorian.

David Ha from the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) has been selected as the winner of Waterloo's 2023 Online Teaching Award.

A group of SAF students swept the competition in Poland and take home the trophy in the 2024 CFA Institute's Research Challenge global finals.

The Contemporary Issues in Sustainability Reporting Symposium, co-organized by Professors Liz Demers and Mingyue Zhang on behalf of the CPA Ontario Centre for Sustainability and Performance Management (CSPM), brought together thought leaders from academia and business to explore and discuss contemporary issues in sustainability reporting.

What is sustainability? Is it a trend, a buzz word or a real solution to many of the climate, economic and social issues we’re facing today? 

With our inaugural Hub for Sustainability Integration Conference coming up next month, we sat down with expert Jennifer Roedding to help paint a clearer picture of how leaders can integrate sustainability into their businesses and see larger profits in the long run.

Dr. Tisha King, professor at Waterloo’s School of Accounting and Finance, collaborated on a research project to find and pay homage to Canada’s first Black accounting professionals in honour of Black History Month.

The School of Accounting and Finance's Student Venture Fund (SVF) had the honour of hosting University of Waterloo President Vivek Goel last week.

New research shows that team-based recognition can be effective in settings where performance is highly interdependent, and teamwork is essential to the company’s success.

With the fall term fast approaching, the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) is excited to welcome the incoming Class of 2028. There is a lot of preparation involved as students get ready for their first year of university. To help with this transition, a team of faculty members at SAF have created a series of modules to get students familiar with the technology requirements for SAF, as well as basic accounting and finance concepts.

by Jessie Ge, PhD Candidate

Based on the emerging technology, this paper proposes a new method to measure the expected duration of competitive advantage for average adopters. This method is based on public data, such as google searches, press releases, book titles, and companies’ disclosures with respect to the technology. The method is very easy to implement.

The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) is pleased to share that Jillian Adams has been awarded the Warren Ober Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student. This award is given to a University of Waterloo graduate student in the Faculty of Arts who has made significant contributions to teaching.

When Blake Phillips began his doctorate in finance in 2009, he was asked to declare a focus. With previous degrees in biology and forestry and an interest in conservation, he zeroed in on sustainable finance.   

Congratulations to School of Accounting and Finance professor Ranjini Jha, recipient of the 2023 Arts Award for Excellence in Service!

Established in 2012 by then-dean Doug Peers, the Arts Awards for Excellence in Service, Teaching and Research recognize exceptional contributions made by faculty, staff, and students in the Faculty of Arts. This is the 11th anniversary of the Arts Awards and more than 30 members of the Arts community were nominated by their chairs, supervisors, and colleagues.

More than 30 nominations submitted for the 2023 Arts Awards for Excellence in Service, Teaching, and Research posed an especially tough challenge for members of the Arts Honours and Awards (AHA) committee this spring. So many outstanding members of the Arts community inspired their chairs, supervisors, and colleagues to put names forward as nominees to recognize their contributions and achievements. Today, Dean Sheila Ager and the AHA committee are happy to share the results.

Wenqian Hu’s paper Trust Versus Rewards: Revisiting Managerial Discretion in Incomplete Contracts was awarded the Lazaridis Institute Prize for the best paper on accounting issues relevant to technology firms. The paper finds that an algorithm-generated bonus allocation scheme improves employee productivity, compared with human managers’ bonus allocation.

Recipients of the 2022 Outstanding Performance Award have been named and include three School of Accounting and Finance faculty members: David Ha, Deborah Kraft and Daniel Rogozynski.

In fast-paced and often rapidly changing work environments, employers continue to seek new and improved ways to recognize employees in the workplace. However, new research from the University of Waterloo suggests that public peer recognition may backfire by enabling comparisons among employees, and these comparisons may make some employees feel unfairly treated.

Krista Fiolleau, associate professor in the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) has recently published a chapter titled “The professional responsibility of accountants as re-defined by the inclusion of the NOCLAR standard in the Code of Ethics” within the Research Handbook on Accounting Ethics alongside co-authors Pier-Luc Nappert from Université Laval and Linda Thorne from the Schulich School of Business.  NOCLAR, an acronym meaning non-compliance with laws and regulations is discussed extensively throughout the chapter.

From becoming the first member of her family to graduate from university, Ranjini Jha now educates other students as a professor of finance at the University of Waterloo.

Mingyue Zhang is an assistant professor of accounting at the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of Waterloo.

She earned her PhD in Accounting from the University of Toronto (Rotman School of Management) and Master of Professional Accounting from Singapore Management University. She is also an affiliate of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.(ACCA)

by Alyana Versolatto

The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) is pleased to share that professor Efrim Boritz was inducted this year into the Canadian Accounting Hall of Fame for his extraordinary contributions to the accounting profession. During Boritz’s illustrious 40-year career at the University of Waterloo, he has been a prolific writer and researcher with 24 books and monographs to his credit and over 40 articles in refereed journals. His research involves investigating areas of professional practice in external auditing and internal auditing which rely on the exercise of professional judgment.

Cyber-attacks and data breaches are of great concern for data-sensitive organizations. These organizations are adept at safeguarding data but fail in safeguarding against cyber-attacks. Phishing is a semantic attack that deceives email users into clicking on the embedded link or attachment in an email. The goal could be to induce the email users to subsequently give away sensitive information, enable malware that can steal passwords, or install a backdoor into the user’s system and encrypt the users’ data. Phishing imposes a great risk on these organizations for two reasons. First, even a non-vital position in which employees likely perceive little cyber risk, if being attacked, could cause significant economic loss and litigations. Second, phishing emails could simultaneously reach most employees within an organization. Thus, strengthening the frontier of safeguarding against phishing is of vital importance.