EY UK revenues rise by 16% to £3.7bn in FY23

EY has achieved a second year of double-digit revenue growth, with UK revenues up 16% and fee income increasing to a record £3.76bn from £3.23bn the previous year. 

This market leading performance has been underpinned by long term investments in people, audit quality and technology. Distributable profits before tax increased 4% to £659m.

EY achieved strong growth across all of its service lines in the UK. Tax revenues grew by 20%, consulting 18%, assurance 17% and strategy and transactions by 8%. EY has also seen strong demand across its industry sectors with stand-out performances from energy (28% UK revenue growth), government and infrastructure (26%), technology, media and telecoms (15%) and financial services (12%).

Hywel Ball, EY’s UK chair, said: “These impressive results mark a third year of market leading growth in the UK. We’ve achieved record UK revenues whilst also continuing to invest for the future.

“The long-term investments we’ve made in the business have underpinned our growth and position us well to continue this trajectory. This year alone, we’ve appointed a further 267 new partners, adding over 10% to our total UK Partner population, whilst also making a $1.4bn (£1.1bn) investment globally in AI.”

Ball continued: “Client demand has remained strong, particularly in areas such as technology consulting, tax and audit. Companies have been looking to our deep expertise as they transform their businesses in response to the economic and regulatory environment and development of rapidly emerging technologies.”

EY has further strengthened the UK business with 267 new partners, marking a 10% increase in EY’s total Partner population in the UK to 1701, compared to 1534 partners at the start of the last financial year. 42% (112) of the new appointments are equity partners and around a quarter (62) of all the new partner appointments are based outside of London.

The firm has also increased its employees’ salaries by £72m and awarded variable pay bonuses of £83m this year, totalling £155m.

In the UK, EY has also invested an additional £116.1m in technology consulting over the last three years through both acquisitions and partner hires. As an example, in FY23 EY acquired whyaye ltd, a UK-based consulting services provider for the ServiceNow platform. A total of eight acquisitions have been made in the UK since April 2021. 

Ball concluded: “The audit profession plays a vital role in the functioning of the capital markets and we take our public interest responsibilities extremely seriously. As a firm, we have continued to make significant investments to ensure we’re able to deliver the consistent high-quality audits that our stakeholders expect, but we are only one part of the UK’s audit and corporate governance ecosystem.”