For accountants and business professionals, AI is no longer a side project, it is quietly rewiring everyday work. In UK financial services, three-quarters of firms now use AI, and according to a Bank of England report, over half of reported use-cases involve some automated decision-making, underscoring the need for auditability and human oversight.

Tax & compliance: from search to supervision. HMRC’s latest Annual Report signals expanded use of AI to improve compliance targeting and staff productivity, with further plans in its transformation roadmap (eg, AI tools to cut adviser admin). For practitioners, that means more data-driven risk selection, and clients expecting faster, evidence-based responses to enquiries.

Audit: document, evidence, explain. The Financial Reporting Council’s 2025 guidance recognises AI’s growing role and stresses documentation, quality management and ethics where technology influences audit evidence or judgments.

Reporting in the FT echoes the direction of travel: firms should track and assess AI’s impact on audit quality, not just speed. In practice, that points to retaining source trails, capturing prompts/outputs for key tests, and ensuring partner-level review.

Regulatory context: principles first, proofs next. The UK’s ‘pro-innovation’ approach places emphasis on transparency, accountability and contestability, with regulators asked to publish their AI strategies and build capability. For finance and professional services, that favours tools that can show their workings (sources, versioning, controls) over opaque black boxes.

What changes in the day-to-day?

• Search to meaning or sense-making. Semantic and retrieval-augmented search condenses thousands of pages into fact-checked briefs with live citations, accelerating first-pass answers while preserving depth;
• Review to risk triage. Models surface anomalies (eg, inconsistencies across filings), allowing seniors to focus on judgment calls; and
• Drafting to decision support. AI speeds letters, working papers and checklists, but firms win when outputs are source-linked and auditable.

This is why specialists are pairing AI with authoritative content. For example, KPMG and Croner-i announced an alliance to power ‘Super-search for smart tax and audit’, a model of AI layered on curated, expert material. At the same time, the Big Four are embedding generative AI into core audit platforms (eg, KPMG Clara) with controls for documentation and review.

Bottom line for firms is, to build workflows that are explainable, source-linked and human-in-the-loop. UK bodies (ICAEW, ACCA) underline ethics and professional judgment; accountants are not being replaced, they’re leading AI strategy and governance.

Choose platforms (such as Croner-i AI) that ground responses in vetted guidance and provide clear citations; then wrap them with firm policies for evidence retention, review and client transparency.

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About the author

Jude Fletcher is director of search and generative AI, Croner-i. Read the full AI Essentials series here

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