How to check whether a CA is genuine

Every ICAI member has a membership number. It is the primary key of the entire profession, and a real one is given out without hesitation because it is a selling point rather than a secret.

Ask for it in writing, along with the name exactly as registered with ICAI. Names matter here: people are registered under a full legal name and often trade under a shorter one, so a mismatch is worth a question rather than an accusation.

A refusal, a delay of several days, or an offer to send a certificate image instead of a number is the answer to your question. Stop there.

ICAI publishes a member search on icai.org. Search by membership number, and check three things against what you were told.

The name matches

The number should return the person you are talking to, not a similar name or a relative.

The membership is current

Membership can lapse. A number that once existed is not the same as a member in good standing today.

The location is plausible

Not proof of anything by itself, but a large mismatch between the registered region and everything else you have been told is worth asking about.

This single lookup rules out the most common problem, which is not an elaborate forgery. It is somebody who studied, did not qualify, and kept using the title.

This is the distinction most businesses have never heard of, and it matters.

A Chartered Accountant in full time employment somewhere else is still a member of ICAI, but they are not in practice. To practise, sign audit reports and issue certificates, a member needs a Certificate of Practice. A member without one is qualified and is not permitted to sign your audit.

So if the work involves anything being signed or certified, ask directly whether the member holds a Certificate of Practice, and whether it is current. Somebody genuinely in practice answers that in one line.

Firms have their own identity. A CA firm registered with ICAI carries a firm registration number, usually shortened to FRN, and it appears on every report the firm signs.

• Ask for the FRN as well as the membership number of the partner who will actually sign your work. They are different things and you want both.
• Confirm the person you have been speaking to is a partner or employee of that firm, rather than someone using its name.
• For audits of larger or listed entities, ask whether the firm holds a current peer review certificate. It is required in some categories of audit and is a fair question in any of them.

A firm name on a letterhead with no FRN anywhere on it is a firm you have not verified.

This is the strongest verification available to you, and it is the one businesses almost never run.

ICAI requires a practising Chartered Accountant to generate a Unique Document Identification Number, a UDIN, for certificates, audit reports and attestations they sign. The number is printed on the document, and anyone holding that document can verify it on ICAI's UDIN portal at udin.icai.org.

That turns a signature into something checkable. It confirms the document was registered by the member whose name is on it, on the date claimed. It is the answer to the two frauds that actually hurt people: a signature copied onto a report the CA never saw, and a certificate produced by someone who is not a CA at all.

What to do

When you receive any signed certificate or audit report, find the UDIN on it and verify it on the portal. It takes under a minute.

If there is no UDIN

Ask why. There are documents that do not require one, and a practising CA can tell you instantly which category yours falls into. Vagueness in response to this question is itself information.

What it does not tell you

UDIN confirms authorship and registration. It says nothing about whether the underlying work was done well.

Every check above answers one question: is this person who they say they are. That question is worth answering and it is not the only one.

A verified Chartered Accountant can still be the wrong hire. They can be badly overloaded in the month you need them. They can have no experience of your sector. They can be excellent at audit and uninterested in the monthly work you actually want. None of that shows up in a register.

So run the credential checks first, because they are cheap and they eliminate the worst outcome. Then judge the rest on track record: work completed for businesses like yours, what those clients said afterwards, and how the person answers the questions in What to ask a CA before you hire.

• A membership number that is promised and never arrives.
• A certificate image offered in place of a number. An image proves nothing and takes seconds to make.
• A firm name with no firm registration number anywhere on any document.
• Anyone offering to sign an audit or certificate for work they did not perform, at any price. That is misconduct, and it is your filing that carries it.
• A guaranteed refund, a guaranteed assessment outcome, or a promise about what a department will decide. Nobody can promise that.
• Pressure to pay the full fee before any scope is written down.
• A request for your portal passwords rather than proper authorised access. See what your accountant should and should not ask for.

Accmeet runs the membership check so that you do not have to run it on every profile you look at. A gold Verified CA badge means three things came back clean against official records.

Membership active

The ICAI membership behind the profile is real and currently active. A lapsed record does not pass.

Identity confirmed

The person operating the account matches the official identity attached to that membership. A borrowed membership number fails here.

Records verified

The membership is claimed once. It cannot be verified against a second Accmeet account, so two profiles can never carry the same credential.

Two things are worth being straight about. First, the badge is a claim about a credential, not about quality, which is why a separate trust score built from completed work sits next to it. Second, not everyone on Accmeet carries the badge. Accountants can create a profile before they verify, and the network genuinely contains both. The badge is what tells them apart.

The specific records checked, and the order they are checked in, are not published, because describing the mechanics in public is a guide to defeating them. What the badge covers is set out in full in the verification explainer.