The largest accountancy institute in the country is cutting costs with nearly 147 staff put at risk of redundancy by ICAEW, with letters sent to 17% of employees
The job cuts are part of a major restructure of the organisation.
ICAEW confirmed that 147 staff have been informed their jobs are at risk, but stressed ‘this was not the same as actually losing their jobs’.
While a final decision has not been made on final redundancies, ICAEW said it plans to ‘redeploy talent into some of these new roles across the organisation’, adding the restructure had been ‘shaped by staff and member feedback’.
‘This may result in some roles being removed and more than 100 new roles being created. These decisions are never taken lightly and we are committed to supporting our people through any change.’
The decision followed a restructuring review into ICAEW focused on future direction and resource planning, which took place after Allan Vallance became chief executive last April, replacing former boss Michael Izza, who retired after 17 years as head of the institute.
Vallance is a chartered accountant and membership organisation careerist, who led the Chartered Insurance Institute and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), both huge member bodies before joining ICAEW.
ICAEW has advised 147 staff that their jobs are at risk due to the restructuring. The job cuts will see the institute downsize staffing numbers by 17% from its total 882 employees in FY24 (FY23: 852 total staff).
The downsizing would also see savings on the annual wage bill of £63.5m in FY24, up from £56.7m year on year. Employment costs are a major operational cost for ICAEW, and it reported a £319,000 hike in executive management pay and remuneration during the course of 2024 to £1.63m, although the CEO’s salary was cut from Izza’s £512,000 basic pay.
Details of which departments are affected have not been confirmed, but the external publishing contract has ended, with those responsibilities brought back in-house, resulting in the job losses.
There has also been criticism of ICAEW after a data breach resulted in all staff on the at risk list being sent details of other employees also affected. One senior accountant described the breach as ‘slightly alarming’.
The names of individuals at risk were ‘inadvertently shared internally with all at-risk UK staff as a result of an issue with ICAEW’s Teams file sharing system. Our data protection team was immediately alerted and advised that the incident was low risk as no personal data was disclosed,’ ICAEW confirmed.
The institute self reported the incident to the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) and stressed ‘we have apologised to the individuals affected and taken steps to ensure this does not happen again’.
The job cuts are a double blow as the government shocked the accountancy sector this week by announcing plans to strip professional bodies of their anti-money laundering oversight powers.
This will hit specialist teams working in AML teams at all the professional bodies as monitoring is going to move to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
FCA not ‘natural supervisor’ for accounting firms | 23 Oct 2025
