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A New Zealand woman has beaten more than 20,000 people from around the world to score the top mark in an internationally recognised financial reporting exam.
Andrea Lockie, who emigrated to Queenstown from the UK nearly four years ago, scored 95 per cent in the exam, which is part of the Certified Chartered Accountants qualification.
The 27-year-old sat the three-hour exam in June but didn't find out until recently that she had topped the paper because all the exams are sent to Scotland for marking.
"I had a few drinks to celebrate. I had my results first. It was a couple of weeks later that I found out I had come first."
The exams are considered to be some of the hardest in the accountancy profession and less than half of those who sit it pass the financial reporting exam.
Lockie said she had a good feeling about the exam but had no idea how well she had done when she walked out of it.
"It depends on the questions and you really don't know how it is going to go until you get the marks back," she said.
Lockie trained as a scientist in the UK and has a masters of chemistry degree but decided to take a year out to go travelling after working in the industry for a year and discovering it was not to her taste.
"I worked in the field of drug research and it can take a minimum of 20 years to go from doing studies on a drug to it going to market. It's a pretty slow process."
She visited New Zealand as part of her OE and decided to stay after meeting her now fiance, Glenn.
Lockie then decided to undertake further study and settled on the accountancy qualification because she could study for it from anywhere in the world.
So far she has completed nine of the 14 papers, studying part-time while she works for accountancy firm WHK Cook Adam Ward Wilson in Queenstown.
Lockie hopes to complete the qualification in the next year to graduate with a bachelor of science degree majoring in applied accountancy.
She was presented with a certificate to recognise her achievement by Richard Martin, head of financial reporting from the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants, at a ceremony in Christchurch last night.
