A CA firm site that ICAI compliance didn't make ugly.
Bagrecha & Singhvi LLP (chartered accountants since 1993, registered with the ICAI under FRN 006339S/S000238, two partners and two offices) asked Nexvia for a website that could explain a 33-year-old practice without breaking the ICAI Code of Ethics. The result is a 28-page editorial site, live at bnsca.in: partner-led, service-mapped, written within the rules, and built to read like a journal rather than a brochure.
Two questions, asked together.
Bagrecha & Singhvi LLP had not built a real website in 33 years of practice. The existing presence was a hand-typed paragraph buried inside a generic directory listing. The brief that started this engagement arrived as two short questions, from the senior partner, over WhatsApp.
"Can the website say what we actually do?"
"Without ICAI sending us a notice?"Senior partner, Bagrecha & Singhvi LLP
That was the entire opening message. No mood board, no competitor list, no "we want it to look like Deloitte". The honesty of the framing told us everything about the engagement we were stepping into. A 33-year-old practice with two ICAI Fellows behind the door wants the website to read like the firm reads in person (quiet, exact, hard-won), and is openly worried that the regulator will not allow it.
We took the second question first. Most CA firm websites in India look identical because their builders never separated what ICAI prohibits from what designers habitually avoid. The two are not the same list. So before any wireframe got drawn, we read the ICAI Code of Ethics for ourselves, specifically the sections governing solicitation, advertising, and the use of testimonials, and made a written "we cannot say this" list. The site was then designed around that list, not against it.
Reading the Code of Ethics first.
The Institute's restrictions on member firm communication are clear, but they are restrictions on claims and solicitation, not on aesthetics. The visual restraint people put on CA firm websites is habit, not regulation. Telling the two apart was the first deliverable of the engagement.
The ICAI Code of Ethics, in summary and as it applies to a member firm's website, prohibits the following:
- Testimonials. No client quotes, no Google reviews embedded, no "what our clients say". Even paraphrased praise is out.
- Comparative claims. No "the best", "the largest", "more experienced than", or any other phrasing that positions the firm against competitors.
- Service pricing. Fees cannot be advertised. No public price lists, no "starting at" copy, no fee calculators.
- Solicitation. The site may inform; it may not persuade. CTAs that promise outcomes ("save 30% on your tax bill") are out.
- Adornment that misrepresents. Stock photos of glass-tower offices or Western boardrooms that do not exist would constitute a misrepresentation of the practice.
What the Code does not prohibit, but Indian CA firm websites usually self-restrict against anyway:
- Typography with character. Serif headlines, hand-set hierarchies, real publishing-quality body text. All permitted, all rare.
- Photography of the actual firm. Real photos of the real office, partners, articled assistants. Permitted, almost never done.
- Detailed service descriptions. Explaining what an audit involves, what its phases are, who staffs it. Entirely permitted, often skipped.
- A "People" section. Every member named, every articled assistant credited. Permitted, almost never seen.
Once that distinction was on paper, the design space opened up considerably. We could write a long, careful, editorial site, full of real explanation rather than promotional copy, and stay safely inside the Code.
A 28-page editorial site that reads like a journal.
The information architecture follows how the partners actually describe the practice in person: who, what, where, how, and (carefully) what to do next. Visit bnsca.in for the shipped site.
About: the practice itself
33-year history in plain prose. Establishment year, registration details, office addresses, partner names and qualifications. No marketing copy, no superlatives: the facts, laid out the way a firm document would.
People: every name
Five dedicated pages: partner-index, two partner profiles, articled-assistants, and salaried staff. Each carries a real photograph and a written profile. The articled assistants are named, a small dignity rarely extended on firm websites.
Services: eight pages, six phases
Each service line gets its own page: statutory audit, internal & concurrent audit, bank-branch audits, government audits, consultancy, loan syndication, incorporation, and special consultation. Each explains the work in phases, not as a brochure bullet list.
Areas of practice: plain index
A separate index page that maps every service back to the regulatory bodies and audit classes it operates under. Useful for prospective clients trying to match a need to the right partner.
Careers & articleship
A standing page for the articleship programme. Names the seniors prospective articled assistants would actually be working under. The firm gets better applicants because the page reads like a job description, not a recruitment ad.
Contact: two offices, no form
Direct email addresses for each partner, phone numbers, both office addresses, working hours. Deliberately no contact form: the partners answer email directly, and a form would only add a noise filter they do not want.
Static HTML, two serif families, nothing else.
A site that has to last for the next decade (without a marketing team, without a designer on retainer) should not depend on a framework that might be deprecated by 2030. The stack is deliberately boring.
Front-end
Typography
Hosting · build
Imagery
SEO
Compliance
Live at bnsca.in. Iteration B shipped.
Two iterations were drawn. Iteration A was a more conventional CA-firm-website direction: confident but unremarkable. Iteration B took the editorial angle, was what the partners chose, and is what now sits at bnsca.in.
The shipped site went through a final-review pass: copy was read line by line by both partners (the same way they would mark up an audit report), photography was captured at the Ballari and Bengaluru offices, and the site was staged on a private URL for a last regulatory read against the Code of Ethics before it went live. Both partners signed off; the firm now owns the source.
What the case study demonstrates, now that the site is live: a regulated-finance practice can have a website that is genuinely well-designed without the regulator having a single line to object to. The constraint isn't the rulebook; it's the habit of reading it as if it were a designer's brief. Read it once, write your list of disallowed phrases, and what's left is more than enough room to do real work. Visit bnsca.in for the shipped result.
Five things worth lifting from this build.
Whether or not you hire Nexvia, these five decisions are portable to any regulated-finance website.
Read the Code yourself, first.
Don't take a designer's word for what's "compliant". The actual Code of Ethics is shorter than most websites' privacy policies. Read it; make a list; design from the list.
Name every person.
Including articled assistants. The Code doesn't forbid it; convention does. A "People" section with real names and real photographs signals depth more than any tagline.
One page per service.
Explaining each service in its own page (with phases, deliverables, the kinds of clients it suits) does the work testimonials would have done, without breaking the Code.
Skip the stock photos.
If the alternative is real photography of the actual office and team, do that. If real photography isn't possible yet, leave the section empty until it is; restraint reads better than borrowed imagery.
Static HTML, ten-year horizon.
Regulated practices last decades. Their websites should too. A static-HTML site outlives whatever JavaScript framework was fashionable the year it was built, and that's the point.
Run a CA, CS, CMA, or law practice? Let's talk.
This was Nexvia's first regulated-finance build. We're talking to a handful of other practices about similar engagements: full ICAI / ICSI / Bar Council compliance, editorial typography, multi-page architecture. One brief, one proposal within 24 hours, source code at launch. The conversation usually starts with a one-line WhatsApp message.