Officials on Wednesday said they are looking at ways to crack down on unlicensed accountants in the city by revising auditing standards, with lawmakers saying the measure will help maintain Hong Kong's status as a global financial hub.

The Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui said that accountants may be required to provide their practising certificate number when signing audit reports.

On his blog, he wrote that companies may also be required to provide the practising certificate number of accountants who helped sign the audit report along with their profits tax returns.

Accounting sector lawmaker Edmund Wong said that currently, it is almost impossible for the government to check if the accountants signing the reports are licensed or not, as most of these documents are submitted in paper form.

"They are pretending that they are licensed to sign off audit reports and sign off reports recklessly without any supporting document behind. In such cases, the unlicensed issues have seriously damaged and impacted our profession's reputation in the past years," he told RTHK.

Wong said the proposed measure would help uphold the SAR's reputation and status as an international financial centre, though he admitted it may take some time for companies to get used to the change.

"It might be causing some inconvenience and difficulties at the beginning, especially for the first few years," he said.

"But as we all know, by 2030, the profits tax return has to be filed electronically. By that time, all those data, including the practising numbers could easily be collected by the government."