In the first Accountancy survey of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) partners and senior managers at the top 10 accounting firms, Philip Smith talks to key players and BAME partners and accountants about why progress on partner numbers is so slow and talks diversity with KPMG senior partner Simon Collins
Just how diverse is the accountancy profession? In an exclusive study, Accountancy asked the UK’s top 10 professional services firms to give details of the ethnic make up of their staff, from partner level through to support staff. At the same time, we asked about their gender balance, again all the way through from top to bottom. The results make for sobering reading.
There are only 10 black partners. Out of more than 4,700 partners in this highest slice of the accountancy profession, only 5% come from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community. A proportion of partners have not self-declared their ethnic origins (Deloitte, for instance, is running an ‘amnesty’ to encourage those who have not already done so to declare their ethnicity), but it would appear that the overwhelming majority of senior accountants, some 80%, class themselves as white.
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