UpSlide's industry report surveyed 400 senior accounting and advisory professionals. Discover how AI, branding, and processes are impacting win rates in a rapidly evolving market.
Manual work, disjointed systems and missed deadlines are making it harder for firms to keep up. Some teams waste hours formatting and linking documents, struggle with version control, and can fall behind schedule – putting client relationships and profitability at risk.
Managing Defined Benefit (DB) pensions can be complex and costly and schemes that do not have a clear long-term plan could be missing out on opportunities to fully remove risk or release cash surplus. The insurance market is now more accessible than ever, and operational consolidation is levelling the playing field – ensuring smaller schemes gain the scale and efficiency of larger counterparts.
The 2025 global economic environment presents significant uncertainty, creating both challenges and opportunities for businesses—and for finance leaders. More than ever, CFOs must provide strategic leadership to the business, guidance through turbulent times, and positioning for continued growth—becoming, in effect, a chief value officer.
April 2025 brought significant changes to employment law. This article outlines key updates that employers need to understand to ensure compliance and efficient payroll management.
The government is continuing to press UK businesses to take a stronger approach to improving cyber resilience and ensure that all organisations of all sizes are prepared for cyber incidents. To this end, the government is issuing a new Cyber Governance Code of Practice. The intention is to highlight the fact that cyber risk should have at least the same prominence as financial or legal risks, and the responsibility and ownership of cyber resilience is a board level matter.
Chartered accountants are at the heart of financial decision-making, ensuring businesses remain profitable, competitive, and compliant with evolving regulations. In an era where energy prices are volatile, and sustainability is a growing priority, accountants have a crucial role in guiding businesses towards net zero—unlocking substantial financial and strategic benefits.
Mitigo highlight why the only way to prove to yourself and your senior leadership team that you have put the right defences in place is to obtain independent assurance.
Using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to improve audit quality is nothing new. The ICAEW’s first significant Paper on the subject Improving audit quality using RCA will soon be 10 years old. In the decade since this paper’s publication the scrutiny on external audits has increased and ISQM (UK) 1 introduced a new requirement for firms to undertake RCA as part of their monitoring and remediation process.
Report from Barnett Waddingham revealing insights into the professional independent trustee (IT) market. It covers the value ITs bring to schemes, areas for improvement, and perceptions from those who haven't worked with ITs before.
People are everything to SMEs, so it’s no wonder that rising health and benefit costs top their list of worries. Employee benefit premiums and related costs ranked first in our People Risk 2024 survey of the most likely people risks to affect their business in the next two years with the most severe impact.
Managing cyber risk is a complex ever-evolving field, with numerous interconnected elements that must be considered to ensure comprehensive protection.
A new report from Workday uncovers large businesses in the UK could save 7.9 billion employee hours per year through the use of ArtificiaI Intelligence (AI). Find out how you can embrace the future of work and consign productivity problems to the past.
Keeping control of pension scheme running costs can be challenging for trustees and employers. The amount a defined benefit (DB) scheme pays will vary depending on its design and complexity – with some costs more obvious than others – so understanding what you are paying is the first step in keeping costs down. Trustees and their advisers, working together, can enable the schemes in their care to achieve better outcomes at lower costs.
Finance professionals must strike a delicate balance between maintaining a competitive edge and implementing cost-saving measures that don't negatively impact customer satisfaction or service quality. So, how can they help their businesses tackle these complex demands? Read the recent report by Payhawk and Raconteur to learn more.
Deepfake technology, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create highly realistic but fake images, audio, and videos, is rapidly emerging as a significant threat in the cyber security landscape. As cyber criminals adopt this technology to exploit vulnerabilities, businesses must understand its implications and strengthen their defences.
Both national and industry sector grants exist to help Small Businesses in the adoption and development of new technology and contribution to net zero. Dell Technologies can help you assess which grants you may be eligible for to assist with purchasing IT hardware or services.
The primary focus of finance department digitisation should be the incorporation of AP automation - more specifically, an intelligent automated invoice process. This is how a business will achieve a cost-efficient, streamlined accounts payable process. Learn more about the benefits in this article.
In a world of continuous change, there’s only one thing more powerful than business agility: continuous foresight. The ability to accurately discern your best, worst, and most likely potential outcomes in a turbulent environment provides a significant competitive advantage.
Sometimes, if our working environment isn’t right, it can affect our physical and mental health. This can lead to burnout. But what exactly is burnout? Rex Fan, Lead Behavioural Insights Advisor, explores what burnout is and what you can do about it.
The insurance industry tends to be cyclical, with a typical cycle spanning several years. The cycles involve periods of soft market conditions and hard market conditions – impacting commercial businesses in different ways. Marsh Commercial explain the opportunities of the soft market, the impact of the hard market and the benefits of access to the exclusive members’ PI insurance scheme.
This comprehensive research surveyed 580 professionals with influence on decision around indirect taxes, from Belgium, Netherlands, DACH, Nordics, Spain, France, UK, Ireland, and the U.S.
Professional indemnity insurance (PII) plays a crucial role in safeguarding businesses and professionals across a number of industries, including accountancy. PI insurance provides protection against financial loss resulting from professional negligence or errors in the delivery of services. As the external environment and business landscape evolves, the PI market has witnessed significant changes, reflecting the dynamic nature of professional services and the increasing complexity of their responsibilities.
Financial pressure on younger generations is relentless. Everything from sky-high university fees and eye-watering rents to mortgages (that were out of reach even before rates rocketed) and inflation are having an impact. And that’s before we even consider big future expenses such as having children or saving into a pension.
Delivering for your clients can be challenging when your accounting firm is up to capacity. And whilst you may be adding far greater value for your clients than a decade ago, there are still plenty of challenges that can hold back the efficiency, growth, and profitability of the firm.
41% of finance leaders identify a lack of visibility over their accounts receivables as their company’s top challenge in better managing cash flow (Bottomline).
With a reported 56% of accountants suffering with stress and burnout¹, it’s become crucial for businesses to prioritise mental health concerns in order to create a supportive workplace.
Aon’s Fixed Price Motor partner Aviva, working closely with Thatcham Research, have developed steps, informed by combined expertise, to help reduce your risks of vehicle theft.
