Accountancy has always been seen as an essential sector underpinning every other business in the UK without getting the recognition and plaudits many feel it deserves. Things might be about to change with the publication of the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy.
Alongside individual sector reports highlighting the ambitions for the higher-profile industries in the country – Manufacturing, Life Sciences and the Creative Industries – there is one specifically identifying professional and business services as “growth-driving sectors” with accountancy, audit and tax named “frontier industries” – positioning accountants as named vital strategic partners crucial for the nation’s growth.
While we can bask in the recognition and say “it’s about time”, visibility also brings with it accountability and expectation.
Against the backdrop of stubborn inflation, regulatory reforms and new technologies such as AI that are evolving faster than the frameworks that govern them; accountancy’s steady, evidence-driven approach is exactly the foundation that future growth and expansion should be built on.
Evidence
You’d expect a pro-accountancy firm like ourselves to continue to bang the drum for the sector (and we will!) but the evidence is clear and striking.
The accountancy sector contributed £33.3 billion to the UK Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2024, growing at a compound annual rate of 2.6% between 2015 and 2024. This is double the 1.3% growth rate produced by the wider economy during the same period and further proof that accountancy isn’t just keeping pace with national productivity – it’s outpacing it by a factor of 100%.
The backbone of a transitioning economy
The Industrial Strategy rightly recognises that professional and business services are at the cutting edge of growth. These represent over 12% of national GVA and employ roughly 20% of all graduates in England alone. A single sector employing one-in-five of all newly qualified graduates is some achievement.
In a fluctuating economy, the steady and reliable sector becomes something more – it effectively underpins and holds it together.
The aim of the strategy is sensible and laudable. It wants to ensure that by 2035, the professional and business services sector has doubled its global value and cemented the UK as the world’s most trusted adviser.
Accountancy will be central to this ambition by helping businesses measure what matters, manage the associated risks and tangibly translate strategy into solvency.
Technology, Trust and Transformation
The key to any knowledge revolution will be the implementation and mastery of technology.
With the breathtaking rise and implementation of automation, data analytics and AI already reshaping the fundamentals of professional advice (and naively replacing it in some cases), there will be an increase in new markets and disciplines – AI assurance for example. Creating independent validation of the algorithms, models and decision systems that many businesses are racing to implement into their central systems.
Currently the UK’s AI assurance market is currently worth over £1 billion but the Industrial Strategy estimates that it could grow sixfold to over £6.5 billion by 2035.
Expansion on this scale would obviously generate increasing revenue but possibly more importantly, could categorically redefine what accountants do. The hallmark of the profession is the independent verification of facts and these are the same qualities and disciplines that responsible AI implementation and use will be dependent on.
Emerging hand-in-hand with this transformative technology is a renewed focus on sustainability and the reporting of it.
The government is consulting on new UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS) which would be based on the global frameworks developed by the International Sustainability Standards Board. These could eventually become mandatory and as businesses adjust it will be accountants that will be quantifying carbon, quality assuring emissions data and turning environmental commitments into measurable performance.
It’s ironic that AI growth and sustainability appear to be fundamentally opposed given the intense water and electricity demands AI data centres will rely on and the, at best, extremely optimistic financial models underpinning their creation and future feasibility.
This government report states that “global projections indicate that AI’s water demand could reach billions of cubic metres annually, posing a substantial threat to water security worldwide and critically, within the United Kingdom.”
This essential tension reinforces why accountants have to be at the heart of decision-making, balancing technological advancement with environmental accountability.
Regulation continues to evolve with plans laid out to transition the Financial Reporting Council into a strengthened audit regulator signalling a future of more transparent corporate reporting with proportionate oversight. The aim, to cut administrative costs by a quarter while improving governance, will decisively demand both efficiency and integrity from those charged with implementing any changes at an operational level.
From Number Crunchers to Data Whisperers
We’ve already written on the changing strategic role of accountants but the official drive of the Modern Industrial Strategy will only move the profession’s role further upstream in the decision-making process of businesses.
As AI continues to outpace operating knowledge and safeguards, accountants are quickly becoming some of its most trusted translators.
Directors operating in this new industrial era have to navigate between ambition and ambiguity. The landscape may evolve but the fundamentals underpinning it will remain the same.
Accountants will need to continue to exercise sound judgement and firm ethical practices to ensure they stay ahead of lines in the sand, especially when they start to move.
We’ll continue to help you and your clients whenever you need a specialist eye or ear on the obstacles they’ll face in 2026 and beyond.