💸 Midlands ACAs are going to get more expensive💸

🎓 Grant Thornton are putting London graduate salaries up to £40k! 🎓

I imagine the Midlands will follow suit… maybe a lower figure, but still an increase.

This will impact the acqusition cost of ACAs into industry. 🪙

Practice is a really unique market. Trainees all have very similar experience, and they all qualify at the same time….So what the Big 4 and Top 10 pay them when they qualify dictates what industry has to pay to get them!

Example:

✅ If people were qualifying on £30k at KPMG or Grant Thornton, newly qualifieds would likely move for £35k – £36k.

✅At the moment in the Midlands, people are qualifying on £46k – £48k depending on the firm, sometimes higher. So most first moves into industry land at £50k – £55k, sometimes up to £60k depending on the role.

💷 So…how will this effect things? Well, if you start ACA studying graduates on £40k, you can only assume that will increase over years 2,3 and when they are qualified.

💷 To be extreme about it… if Grant Thornton end up paying NQs £60k, industry will need to pay £65k, maybe more, to lure someone who has just spent 3 years in audit. How will this effect wider budgets, will we see less ACA roles?

💷 Why is practice so different?

When a Management Accountant leaves a manufacturing business, they dont ring every other manufacturing accountant within a 20 mile radius and tell them what salary they got, at what company.

⭐ In practice, they do! ⭐ Newly qualified ACAs often know each other. They have very comparable experience….

….So when candidate A lands a job at £55k, they tell 3 or 4 others on their training scheme … and now rightly, the others have their expecations set at this level.

Right now its just Grant Thornton. But personally, I dont see how GT can pay £40k basic salaries without at least the Big 4, if not the Top 10, following to some degree.

A good time to be ACA/CA qualified 🚀

Feel free to follow me for more insight and ask any questions in the comments Daniel Taylor