While staff in tax at EY US will soon be spending more time with their flesh-based colleagues due to a return-to-office mandate that requires them in the office for an average of three days a week, staff in audit across the world will be getting to know the AI the firm is injecting into their tools.
From EY’s press release:
EY launches enterprise-scale agentic AI to redefine the audit experience for the AI era
EY is directly embedding a new multi-agent framework, integrated with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft Fabric, into EY Canvas — the single, global Assurance technology platform that processes more than 1.4 trillion lines of journal entry data per year. Encompassing the daily workflows of 130,000 Assurance professionals across 160,000 audit engagements and more than 150 countries and territories, these capabilities will help audit teams orchestrate complex tasks, processes and technologies, and address risks more dynamically, while accessing continuously updated auditing and accounting guidance — at unprecedented scale and speed.
This overall agentic integration immediately embeds AI in all phases of the audit globally through the EY Canvas platform. This follows a sustained period of extensive and successful testing and piloting. It is expected to support all end-to-end audit activities by 2028.
This all sounds great on paper — or in this case, words on a screen — but what does this mean practically? Answer: no one knows yet. They can’t just set AI loose and put it to work.
Our prediction is that if this does actually result in significant benefit to hours worked at some point that benefit will show in offshore staffing levels (at last count, EY has about 74,000 Global Delivery Services people). They’re the ones most at risk from automation, the people previously at risk (early career grunts) having been replaced already by offshore staff. If firms stop announcing that they’re building large global delivery facilities (see this example from last year: EY Opens Up a New 22,000 Sq Ft Offshore Office in India), then we’ll know the AI is paying off.
Until then, regulators better hurry up and do more than just issue loose guidance about this stuff. And have we figured out how to train up the next generation of managers in this global, tech-forward nightmare future yet?
Big 4 firms are the answer to the question “What happens when you let a bunch of accountants with no creativity, imagination, vision or charisma actually run a real company?”
If it weren’t so destructive to the accounting profession, it would be hilarious watching all the Big 4 firms falling over themselves to appear as leaders in the AI revolution rather than the uninspired followers that they all are. My favorite is the managers and directors who drank the kool-aid and are selling the AI bullshit because they think it will advance their careers, when in fact they are just hastening their own demise. Reminds me of cashiers at the supermarket who encourage customers to use the self check-out.