What "recognised" means — and what it does not oblige anyone to do

Mutual recognition is the most over-read word in certification marketing. It is worth being precise about what it does, because the gap between that and what people assume is where disappointment lives.

What the arrangement actually says

Under the IAF Multilateral Recognition Arrangement, accreditation bodies are peer-evaluated by their counterparts and, on that basis, recognise each other's accreditations as equivalent.

Read that carefully. The parties to the arrangement are accreditation bodies. What they recognise is each other's accreditation. The commitment runs between them.

That is a real and substantial thing. It means the assessment behind your certificate was conducted under requirements a peer group examines, and that the body which accredited your certification body is held to the same standard as its counterparts elsewhere.

What it does not do

It does not oblige a private buyer to accept your certificate.

A company purchasing from you can set whatever supplier requirements it likes. It can require a specific scheme, a specific accreditation body, an additional audit, or a certificate from a body on its own approved list. None of that breaches anything, because a private purchasing policy is not bound by an arrangement between accreditation bodies.

It does not override national regulation. Where a state requires assessment by a designated body for a regulated product, mutual recognition among accreditation bodies does not change that requirement.

It does not cover schemes outside the signatory's scope. Recognition follows the accreditation body's own recognised scope. A scheme outside it is outside the arrangement, whatever else is true about the certificate.

Why this matters commercially

Because "recognised in 100+ economies" is often heard as "will be accepted by anyone".

The honest version is more useful: your certificate was issued under an accreditation that other accreditation bodies treat as equivalent to their own, and it is verifiable in a public global registry. That is a strong position with a buyer who is willing to check, and it is exactly nothing with a buyer whose policy names a different body.

The three questions that reveal what a buyer actually needs

"Is this a requirement you set, or one that applies to the product by law?" Separates purchasing policy from regulation. Only the first is negotiable in principle.

"Would a certificate accredited by another IAF MLA signatory satisfy you?" If yes, mutual recognition is the whole answer. If no, the requirement is about a specific body or scheme, and no amount of explaining the arrangement will move it.

"What are you trying to assure yourself of?" The most useful of the three, and the one least often asked. Sometimes the underlying concern is traceability, or a specific hazard, or an incident in their own supply chain — and the certificate request is a proxy for it. Understanding the concern occasionally reveals that a different, faster answer would satisfy them.

For the person receiving certificates rather than sending them

The same precision helps in the other direction.

If you set a supplier requirement, name the scheme and say whether accreditation is required and by whom. "Must be ISO certified" produces documents you then have to evaluate. "Must hold ISO 9001 certification accredited by an IAF MLA signatory, verifiable on IAF CertSearch" produces something you can check in a minute.

The second version also tells your supplier what good looks like, which is usually cheaper for both of you than three rounds of correspondence.

CAS — An EGAC accredited MS certification body No. 012418. EGAC is a signatory to the IAF MLA; certificates accredited for ISO 9001, 14001, 45001, 22000 and 50001 fall within that scope, and ISO 22301 sits outside it.

Verify any certificate: cas.com.eg/certsearch