Mr Crombie, chairman of the New Zealand Institute, is in Dunedin today with institute chief executive Craig Norgate to consult some of the 600 Otago members about the proposal to form a new transtasman accountants' institute.
This morning, they were to hold the first consultation session in Invercargill, followed by one in Dunedin this afternoon.
''The big picture is we have 33,000 members and Australia has 60,000. We are a $100 million-a-year business and we are spread around the globe. About a quarter of New Zealand members work overseas.
''We have offices in Melbourne, Sydney and London but now we need to look at Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur,'' he said in an interview.
The institutes faced a demographic challenge to provide the tools their members needed to do their jobs properly. IT systems were needed to support that work and the New Zealand and Australian institutes faced global competition from other professional bodies.
About two years ago in New Zealand, the institute board started considering how to respond to those challenges.
''It's a global economy, full stop. While some of our members will still provide services to small and medium-sized enterprises in rural New Zealand, those businesses can operate in all sorts of ways - as exporters or through the internet.''
The one thing members were adamant about, Mr Crombie said, was that the ''Chartered Accountant'' or ''CA'' remained the pre-eminent brand to maintain a market advantage. In many cases, the public could not tell the difference between a CA and an ordinary accountant.
One of the options was reducing the size of the institute in New Zealand, but becoming a niche player held little interest.
Members were asking for more tools to help them with their job, more professional training and more lobbying of the Government to provide ''sensible'' tax policy, not reduced services, he said.
Another option was increasing fees substantially, and that was also ruled out.
The best partner was the Australian institute but even then, the two institutes wanted something new, Mr Crombie said. Merging two 100-year institutes could have meant just having one older-style institute. Instead, it was proposed to establish a new transtasman institute.
''I do think this is the right thing to do. The board and council agree.
We don't want to downsize.''
Consultation will take place on both sides of the Tasman from today until July 12. A decision on holding a vote would be made after members' feedback had been analysed, Mr Crombie said.
Anticipated costs for establishing the new institute had been put at about $13 million with annual synergies expected to be worth between $6 million and $12 million.
