Qualification type × ECA agency: which of the five will even look at what you hold

Most people asking “which ECA agency should I use” are already one step past the question that actually decides their case. Before any of the five compares your credential to anything, it decides whether the credential is in scope. On that first question they openly disagree, and the disagreement is published: three of the five will refuse a professional designation outright, one has a per-country section built specifically for professional bodies, and one refuses medical specialisation while the others do not mention it.

This page is a matrix of published scope rules, compiled by us from the five organisations’ own pages on 3 September 2026. It contains no agency’s comparability table, and it does not say what any qualification will be reported as. That decision belongs to the organisation you apply to.

The scope matrix

“Refused” means the organisation names the category on its own published exclusion list. “Not published” means we could not find the category addressed on that organisation’s pages — it is not a finding that the category is accepted.

What you hold	ICES	IQAS	ICAS	CES	WES
Professional designation (e.g. a chartered accountancy membership)	Refused: “Professional licenses or titles such as a Chartered Accountant”	Refused: “professional qualifications – for example, chartered accountant designation”	Refused: reports “do not include… professional examinations”	Refused by implication: reports “include only educational credentials received through formal education completed at academic institutions”	Not published as an exclusion; its document tool carries a per-country “Professional Education” section naming national professional institutes for at least one country
Trade / apprenticeship certificate	Refused: “Trade qualifications”, “Apprenticeships”; FAQ: “We do not assess the trades including apprentice and professional qualifications”	Refused: “vocational or trades training – for example, diesel mechanics program”	Not published	Refused by implication (formal academic education only)	Refused: “WES does not evaluate occupational or trade qualifications”
Exam-based award with no programme of study	Refused: “Exam based qualifications”	Not published	Refused: “professional examinations”	Refused by implication	Not published
Incomplete or in-progress programme	Refused: “Incomplete or provisional academic credentials”; “Provisional documents are not accepted in lieu of final documents”	Refused: “incomplete credentials – for example, individual semesters or trimesters. Only credentials that include graduation or convocation confirmation will be assessed”	Not published as an exclusion	Not published as an exclusion	Not published as an exclusion; the document tool offers “Incomplete or In-Progress” as a status
Credential shorter than one year full-time	Refused: “The credential must be at least comparable to one-year of full-time study”	Not published as a length floor	Not published	Not published	Not published
Anything below secondary level	Not published as such	Refused: “anything below secondary or high school level – for example, primary or elementary level”	Not published	Not published	Not published
Non-credit CPD, short courses, software training	Refused: “Continuing education courses taken at non-recognized institutions”, “Non-credit professional development courses”	Refused: “non-academic credentials – for example, Microsoft Excel training”	Refused: “in-service professional development”	Refused: “Non-formal and/or non-academic qualifications will not be assessed”	Not published
Work or life experience	Refused: “Work or life experience”	Not published	Refused: “work experience”	Refused by implication	Not published
Military training	Refused: “Military training”	Not published	Not published	Not published	Not published
Second-language training	Refused: “Second language training”	Not published	Not published	Not published	Not published
Medical specialisation (a specialist qualification on top of a medical degree)	Not published	Not published	Refused: “Medical specialization is beyond the scope of ICAS Assessment Reports and will not be included”	Not published	Not published — but see the IRCC rule below
A credential you obtained in Canada	Not published	Refused: “credentials obtained in Canada”	Not published	Not published	Not published
A doctorate with no coursework transcript	Accepted with conditions (the FAQ addresses PhDs with no transcript issued)	Accepted with conditions: upload “the PhD degree and cover page of the thesis if applicable”	Accepted with conditions: “you must submit a copy of the title page, table of contents and abstract of your thesis/dissertation”	Accepted with conditions: “If you completed a doctoral degree, an official confirmation of degree conferral is required” (UK page)	Accepted: “WES evaluates formal education studies, including research-based programs”

Two rows in that table are the ones that end applications before they start.

Row one: professional designations, and the split that matters

Three organisations name a chartered accountancy designation as an example of something they will not assess. That is unambiguous and it is not a judgement about the designation’s value — it is a statement that the thing is not an academic credential and therefore not what an ECA measures.

WES is different in an interesting way. It does not publish that exclusion for professional bodies as a category, and its required-documents tool, for at least one large source country, offers a section headed “Professional Education” naming that country’s institutes of chartered accountants, cost and works accountants, engineers and company secretaries. A published section in a document-requirements tool is not the same as a published statement that such a qualification will be reported at a particular level, and we are not going to treat it as one. What it does establish is that the five do not agree on whether a professional-body qualification is even the kind of thing an ECA is for.

What all five do agree on is that an ECA does not license anyone. IQAS: an ECA “does not mean that your credentials are recognized for licensure in Canada.” ICAS: reports “do not replace or override assessments required by regulatory bodies, professional associations, educational institutions or other organizations.” Which professional route replaces the ECA entirely is covered in when an ECA is not the assessment, and how the accountancy bodies themselves fit is in ACCA, CA and CIMA in a Canadian ECA.

Row two: completion, and why “provisional” is a technical word

Both organisations that publish a rule here publish a hard one. ICES: “ICES will only provide ECA reports for fully completed academic credentials. A certificate, diploma, or degree must have been completed and awarded… Provisional documents are not accepted in lieu of final documents.” Its FAQ is blunter: “I finished my program of study and have my transcript. I am still waiting for my final degree. Can I apply? No… A statement or notification of results is also not sufficient.”

IQAS: “Only credentials that include graduation or convocation confirmation will be assessed.”

And yet “provisional” is not treated the same way everywhere — not even inside one organisation. On CES’s India page the first required item is “Final or provisional diploma/degree certificate”, and its Iran page likewise accepts a “Final or provisional degree certificate (daneshnameh)”. On CES’s Bangladesh page, three clicks away in the same tool, the note reads: “Provisional Certificate is not acceptable.”

That is not a contradiction to be scored against CES — it is a country-level rule, and it is exactly why a general answer to “does a provisional certificate count?” is worthless. The answer depends on the agency and the country, and it is written on the country page. If a provisional certificate is all you have, read that page before paying, because at least one agency says no across the board and another says no for some countries and yes for others.

The three occupations where the matrix does not apply at all

IRCC removes three occupations from the five general organisations entirely. If your primary occupation is architect (NOC 21200), specialist or family physician (NOC 31100, 31101, 31102), or pharmacist (NOC 31120), and — for architects and pharmacists — “you need a license to practise”, the assessment must come from a designated professional body instead: the Canadian Architectural Certification Board, the Medical Council of Canada, or the Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada. IRCC adds the carve-out that matters to a lot of people: “If you’re in a position where you don’t need a license, one of the other designated organizations can assess your credentials.”

Every one of the five repeats this on its own site, which is unusual — it is the only rule in this whole area where all five say the same thing in nearly the same words.

Why the matrix has so many blanks

Because the framework these organisations work under does not require them to publish the same things. Canada’s national quality assurance framework, in the words of the pan-Canadian information centre, “respects the autonomy of organizations; and is not prescriptive.” Each organisation then writes its own scope statement, at whatever level of detail it chooses. ICES’s list has ten categories; IQAS’s has six drawn differently; CES draws one line by formality; WES publishes almost none of this as a list and instead reserves discretion in its terms: “WES reserves the right not to evaluate documents from certain institutions in its sole and absolute discretion.”

A blank in the table above is therefore a genuine finding about what is publicly checkable, not a gap in our reading. The deeper reason the five reach different conclusions is set out in why two designated agencies can report the same credential differently.

How to read this table

1. Scope is decided before comparability, and it is where the money is lost. IQAS: fees “are required whether an assessment certificate is issued or not.” ICES: “No refunds are offered for cancelled ECA applications.”
2. “Not published” is not “accepted.” Four of the five reserve broad discretion in their terms. CES, for instance, “reserves the right to provide an assessment with a negative outcome” where a credential “is found not to be recognized by the competent educational authorities of its country of origin”.
3. A category refused by one agency is not necessarily refused by all — and that is a legitimate reason to choose one over another, unlike price.
4. Nothing in this table tells you what a credential is worth. Being in scope only means the organisation will look at it.

What to do with this

1. Name your credential precisely — the exact award title, its nominal length, and whether it was awarded on completion of a programme or on passing an examination. That is what the scope rules turn on.
2. Find the row you are actually in, then read that agency’s own page for that row before paying anything.
3. If you sit in one of the three IRCC-designated occupations and need a licence, stop reading agency comparisons; the body is chosen for you.
4. If you hold two credentials of different types, remember that IRCC only asks for the highest in most cases, and that a combination row exists — the mechanics are in one-year versus two-year credentials.

What this page does not do

It does not tell you which organisation to use, does not predict any outcome, and does not reproduce any organisation’s comparability table. Scope statements change; check the organisation’s own page on the day you apply.