EY UK has reported fee income growth of 9.2% to £2.35bn for the year ending 30 June 2017.
The firm saw growth across all four service lines in the past year. Transaction advisory services saw the most growth of 15.1% to £396m, while assurance grew by 11.3% to £689m, propelled by increased revenues from prior year audit wins. Meanwhile, tax grew by 9.1% to £634m and financial services grew over 8%.
Average distributable profit per partner was £677,000, an increase of 2.3% from 2016.
Steve Varley, EY’s UK chairman, commented: “This is a strong performance, particularly in an environment where Brexit and other geopolitical events have added a new dimension to doing business in the UK.”
“We’ve seen growth across all of our service lines, sectors and our main offices across the UK.”
Investments
EY has made several investments over the past year, particularly into technology, which have contributed to growth.
The investments include the Capital Allowance Automatic Review Tool (CAART), a tool which uses machine learning to identify correct tax codes and improve working efficiency by 99%, condensing 35 hours work into 15 minutes.
Another technological investment made by the firm was into cloud accounting technology EY Absolute, with further investments in areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence and blockchain solutions.
Varley added: “It has been a record year of tech investment which will continue into FY18 as we support our clients to transform their businesses. These investments will contribute to growth across all our service lines and sectors.”
People
The Big Four firm grew their employee base by recruiting around 4,000 people in the past year, including 63 new equity partners. A further 4,000 employees were internally promoted.
With a strong focus on career development, EY’s new employees also included 1,500 student places and 130 apprenticeships.
Varley said: “It is important that we continue to invest in our people and attract world class talent who want to develop their careers here. We received over 40,000 applications for the 1,500 graduate places on offer this year, while our apprenticeship programme sparked the interest of over 5,000 people.”
Conclusion
Varley concluded: “2017 has been a tough economic environment to navigate and I am pleased that in the UK we have continued with our long term strategy to invest which has helped us achieve this year’s market leading growth.”
Earlier this year the Big Four firm revealed combined global revenues of US$31.4bn, an increase of 7.8%.
The firm also recently published its pay gap data, reporting its gender pay gap at 19.7%.