Accountex 2026: what the profession is really telling us

I spent time at Accountex 2026 this year and came away thinking less about technology and more about pressure. Which is odd when you have an event which has so much amazing technology on display.

My overall take away: we are a profession that is still growing, still evolving and still full of opportunity, but increasingly stretched underneath the surface.

That felt like the real theme running through the conversations, sessions and research this year. Not one big trend, but a growing sense that the shape of accountancy itself is changing.

Growth is still there. Capacity is the issue.

Accounting continues to grow, particularly during periods of major operational or regulatory change. We’ve seen it before with digital filing, iXBRL, Making Tax Digital and even Covid. Disruption tends to accelerate demand for advisory support and operational guidance.

The profession still looks healthy on paper. Membership numbers have risen steadily in recent years but underneath that, there are signs of strain.

Student numbers dropped sharply through 2022 and 2023 before recovering a little this year. That kind of fluctuation matters because firms are already struggling with one of the biggest issues in the sector right now: capacity.

There is no shortage of work. There is no shortage of clients needing support.

What firms are short of is time, people and operational headroom. It’s that pressure that is changing the way many practices now operate.

Firms are becoming operational support hubs

One thing that stood out repeatedly across Accountex was how much work firms are now absorbing outside traditional accounting services. Not necessarily because they want to. Because clients increasingly expect it.

Software guidance. Process support. Workflow advice. AI questions. Data issues. Business operations. Compliance reassurance. A lot of this work sits outside formal scope, yet still becomes part of the client relationship.

Research shared around the event reinforced the point. Only 44 per cent of practitioner time is now spent on core accounting work with 81 per cent regularly taking on work outside agreed scope.

The accountant is no longer simply delivering accounts and tax returns. Many firms are becoming embedded operational partners for SMEs trying to navigate increasingly complex technology, regulation and business change.

The challenge is that many firms are still priced and structured as though they are operating in the old world.

Speed is becoming a competitive advantage

Another clear theme was responsiveness.

The data showed a surprisingly wide gap between how quickly firms respond to new enquiries. Some firms reply within an hour. Others still take a day or more.

What was particularly interesting was where the fastest response times often sit with smaller firms and sole practitioners typically quicker than larger firms.

That matters because client expectations have changed. Access, responsiveness and availability are increasingly viewed as standard rather than premium service.

In that environment, speed becomes a differentiator. Not size. Not brand. Not office footprint. Speed with the firm that responds first often feeling more engaged, more proactive and easier to work with. That creates a very different competitive dynamic to the one many larger firms have historically relied upon.

AI adoption is still early

AI dominated plenty of conversations across the event, but one point from Sage CFO Jacqui Cartin stayed with me: AI is not simply about doing the same work faster. It is about understanding where judgement matters, what problems need solving and what time can be freed up for higher value work.

That framing feels important for accountancy because trust and accountability still matter enormously.

But the adoption gap is becoming harder to ignore.

Around 35 per cent of businesses are now using AI in some form, yet accounting firms remain significantly behind that curve. In the UK, active investment levels are still relatively low.

What became obvious during the more practical sessions is that most firms are still at the experimentation stage. Plenty are testing tools. Very few are fundamentally redesigning workflows or operational processes around AI capability.

One audience comment captured it perfectly during a session on AI agents: “You make it look so easy.”

That probably sums up the market right now better than any statistic – the gap between what is possible and what firms are operationally ready to implement is still huge.

It still comes back to people

For all the discussion around technology, Accountex still felt heavily centred around people with leadership, communication, culture and confidence being core themes.

Simply put: none of this works if teams are not equipped to have better conversations with clients and adapt to broader expectations.

One standout session on pricing focused less on pricing models and more on giving teams the confidence to have direct conversations around value, scope and client expectations. That feels increasingly important because the profession is not getting simpler. In fact the work is becoming broader, more operational and harder to define.

And that, more than any individual technology trend, felt like the real story coming out of Accountex this year.

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