‘We now offer services in new areas’ NED MURPHY
ACTIVITY We have seen significant revenue growth across all our income stream offerings. Our key focus and area of expertise is dealing with the SME sector. Their needs are becoming increasingly complex as businesses need to respond to the ever increasing challenges in areas such as: The regulatory environment in which they operate.
Access to funds and the cost of funds
– both are now more precarious in an environment of tightened monetary policy. General uncertainty due to geopolitical risks, which are very clear and capable of quickly driving inflation.
Skills shortages.
Tax planning in areas of succession issues, mergers and acquisitions and general expansion remains a key area of importance. Following on from our partnering with our Moore firm in London, Moore Kingston Smith, we are now in a position to offer services in new areas which are becoming increasingly important. This would typically include ESG, cyber security, gender reporting, in addition to all standard compliance requirements.
OPERATIONS We are pursuing a strategy of expansion through acquisition in addition to organic growth. This strategy is driven by operational challenges in areas such as technological advancements, regulatory changes, and every increasing client service requirements. Talent acquisition and retention in the accountancy sector remains one of the major challenges all of us are facing, and our People team is focused on strategies to ensure that we attract and retain the best. We believe Moore offers a strong differentiator by offering a huge range of experience across many sectors in addition to a hybrid work policy.
PROFESSION IT skills are becoming more important for accountants, in areas such as data analytics and cloud computing platforms. We are seeing the impact that artificial intelligence, blockchain and various machine learning is having in our industry. Beyond that, we are all grappling with the awesome power of large language models and how that can transform business. And the growing impact of deepfake technology as an enabler of fraud is concerning. However, the fundamentals of accounting are principlebased and require judgement.
OUTLOOK Feedback from our clients would suggest confidence in the economy is strong. Stabilisation of inflation and interest rates are important factors in our clients’ considerations of expansion plans, and the SME sector remains agile and resilient in the face of challenges in the area of labour markets and geopolitical uncertainty.