• The Big Four — EY, Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC — are the world's largest accounting and consulting firms.
• They pull in billions annually but have faced a slowdown in demand for their services.
• This is how the Big Four have performed in recent years, and how they're looking to adapt in future.

Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC are the world's largest accounting and consulting firms, known as the Big Four.

With histories dating back to the 19th century, they have grown into billion-dollar companies employing hundreds of thousands of staff who earn high salaries and often work very long hours.

The Big Four offer companies services such as workforce transformations, reshaping corporate finance portfolios, assurance, valuation, and optimizing the use of technology.

Put simply, they're there to assess businesses and tell them how to run more efficiently.

The pandemic changed the landscape for the major firms, with a surge in demand that sparked a hiring boom. The Big Four are now attempting to balance operations amid slowing demand.

Here's a look at where the Big Four stand.

EY

After a series of mergers, EY was formed in 1989 as the accountancy firm Ernst & Young. It has since diversified its offerings and, in 2013, rebranded to EY.

Headquartered in central London, EY has more than 700 offices in 150 countries. Janet Truncale, the global chair and CEO, took over from Carmine Di Sibio in July.

EY focuses heavily on consultancy and assurance but also covers tax and strategy, and transactions.

Revenue was up 3.9% on the previous year to $51.2 billion, according to the firm's latest annual report published in October. It was EY's poorest performance since 2010. Assurance services were its largest revenue generator.

In May 2024, the firm was caught up in a scandal along with PwC and fined $11.7 million by UK authorities for a series of auditing failures.

As pressure has mounted, EY cut UK partner payouts by 5% and laid off employees. Overall employee numbers dropped by 2,450 during EY's latest financial year — the first decrease in 14 years.

EY's global head count now stands at about 393,000.

In 2023, the firm launched EY.ai, an AI platform aiming to assist clients across all its professional services. It also offers clients a conversational AI assistant called EYQ.

Deloitte

Deloitte is the largest of the Big Four by both revenue and employees.

Founded in the UK in 1845, Deloitte expanded into the US in 1890. It is headquartered in London and has more than 700 offices in some 150 countries. It's known for strong business and technology consulting services.

Joe Ucuzoglu has been its global CEO since 2022.

In March, Deloitte announced a major restructuring aimed at cutting costs and repositioning it for future success.

It is "modernizing and simplifying" its core offering into four categories: audit and assurance, tax and legal strategy, risk and transactions, and technology and transformation.

Global revenue climbed 3.1% to $67.2 billion in the 2024 financial year, but, like EY, that performance was far lower than the 14.9% growth in 2023.

The slowdown has affected partner payouts, which fell by 4.5% to about $1.27 million. Equity partners took home roughly $63,000 less than they did a year ago.

Deloitte's global workforce expanded to 460,000 in 2024, an increase of 3,000.

Deloitte has pledged to invest $3 billion in AI by fiscal year 2030 and has partnered with technology industry leaders Nvidia, Google Cloud, and AWS to develop its client offering.

PwC

PwC is often considered the most prestigious of the Big Four, and topped the latest Vault Accounting 25 ranking.

Officially formed in 1998 from a merger between Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, PwC's headquarters is almost opposite EY's main office in London.

Mohamed Kande has been the global chairman since July.

PwC has three core lines of business — assurance, advisory, and tax and legal services — but the firm is particularly known for its strong and well-established audit client base.

It employs more than 370,000 people in 149 countries and territories.

In 2021, PwC committed to creating over 100,000 net new jobs over a five-year period, and in October 2024, it said it had already hit three-quarters of that target.

PwC was the second-highest earning of the Big Four, posting record gross revenue of $55.4 billion and 3.7% annual growth in the year to June 30.

Though not as stark a slowdown as Deloitte or EY, growth at PwC still dropped noticeably compared to the 9.9% rise reported for the previous 12 months.

A number of high-profile scandals in the Asia-Pacific region involving its work with the Australian and Chinese governments damaged business.

To handle the changing environment, PwC cut partner pay by 5%, leaving partners taking home an average of $1.09 million this financial year.

In October The Wall Street Journal reported that the firm would make its first major layoffs since 2009 and cut 1,800 jobs.

PwC has invested $1.5 billion to expand and scale its AI capabilities. In February 2024, it unveiled a tax AI assistant for 2,300 PwC tax professionals in the UK to use.

KPMG

The smallest of the Big Four in terms of revenue and employees, KPMG is headquartered in Amsterdam and has a long-serving leader in chairman and chief executive Bill Thomas.

Its core services cover audit, tax and legal, and advisory.

The last of the Big Four to report its 2024 results, KPMG reported in December that in the 12 months to September 30, it saw revenues of $38.4 billion, a rise of just over 5% compared to 2023.

Overall, its revenues are the lowest among the Big Four, close to $20 billion less than its three competitors.

KPMG has faced scrutiny across several markets for its auditing and accounting work. In 2023, it was fined a record $26 million in the UK after "exceptional" failures in its accounting work.

Employee numbers grew by just over 1% in the 2024 financial year to reach 275,000. That's 185,000 people fewer than Deloitte.

Over 2024, KPMG has made a series of layoffs. About 330 staff, or 4%, were cut from its US audit practice; 5% cut across advisory, tax, and back-office functions; and 2% from its advisory workforce in 2023, according to Accountancy Age.

KPMG said it is looking to invest more in specialist roles in areas like ESG, tax, and technology.

While it lags behind in revenues, the firm is seen to foster a less cutthroat workplace than its competitors. The firm has said it aims to have women in a third of partner or director roles by 2025.

According to its latest report, women hold 29.9% of leadership roles.

What's your experience of working at the Big Four accountancy firms? Contact this reporter in confidence at [email protected]

• KPMG's head of AI, David Rowlands, is helping the firm transform for an AI future.
• He spoke with Business Insider about the barriers businesses face as they try to do the same.
• Don't focus on single-use cases for AI and sort out your data, he advised.

KPMG, one of the Big Four consultancies, has weaved AI into all its operations and is advising global businesses about how to do the same.

All employees across the firm's three divisions — accounting, tax, and advisory — have the ability to use AI. Everyone has access to a form of GPT and roughly a fifth of the global workforce have Copilot licenses, David Rowlands, KPMG's global head of AI, told Business Insider.

"Whatever they were doing already, they can now do quicker," he said in an interview.

But the vast majority of companies are still on the adoption path, and clients who come to KPMG are still thinking about how to get it going and how to get the data, Rowlands said.

Clients' concerns about AI have shifted over time: First, it was ethics, hallucinations, and trust; the past four or five months, it's been about realizing the business case and enabling the workforce to adopt it; and next, it's the question of data and how organizations differentiate through their data and protect it.

BI spoke with Rowlands about KPMG's own adoption journey and how the firm advises businesses as they deepen their use of AI.

One of the biggest barriers for companies to overcome is the focus on single-use cases for AI systems.

Many businesses are deploying an AI agent to sit over a curated database and pick out data to make rapid recommendations to a human operator, he explained. But systems must have reusability.

"What you have to think about is having AI embedded in your operating model," he said. "At KPMG, we're keen to get people beyond use cases because a point piece of technology, a point use case, hasn't been a particularly effective business case."

Clarity on the business case is also the best way to see a return on investment, he added.

The question of returns has been a hot topic among CEOs as billions of dollars continue to pour into AI infrastructure. Some economists and analysts have warned that money is being wasted on hype, while others have said the rate of improvement is slowing and AI is hitting a wall.

KPMG is buying into the hype. In 2023, the firm said it would invest $2 billion in artificial intelligence and cloud services in partnership with Microsoft over the next five years and expected the strategy to generate more than $12 billion in revenue over that period.

In November, it announced a $100 million investment in Google Cloud, which it said could drive $1 billion in growth.

Rowlands said it's hard to get clients to see the wider impact when they can't see an immediate ROI. But he said the benefits would come through improvements in growth, quality, and agility: "We already see that a copilot system saves about 40 minutes a week."

In mid-2024, some of KPMG's surveys on returns were "ambivalent," but they're now "getting some anecdotal evidence of ROI," Rowlands said. This time next year, he added, COOs and CFOs are going to be positive about the returns they're getting.

Data will differentiate your business

How to approach data is another barrier for clients in their AI journey, Rowlands said.

"Organizations will be increasingly differentiated by the data that they own," he said. That requires becoming more mindful about where your data sits, who owns it, where it's generated, and how you keep it up to date.

Data will only be more integral as we enter the next stage of AI's evolution, Rowlands added. He expects that within the next 12 months, multi-agent models — a group of specialized AI agents that coordinate to solve a collective goal —will rapidly become a reality.

"That is where AI is going to start to have a big impact on solving some of the biggest problems, such as decarbonization," he said.

Preparing the workforce for these changes is part of implementing AI responsibly, Rowlands said.

KPMG ran a "24 hours of AI" training session in January this year. The key message was that everyone should know how to use AI against their problems and be trusted and innovative with their use of it in front of clients. The firm is continuing to train its workforce in data curation, looking after data, and prompt craft.

Rowlands doesn't deny that AI will have a "deep transformational impact" on the professional-services industry. He said there would be a rotation of jobs, as happened with the internet, but it wouldn't diminish consultants' purpose.

"We don't really think about replacing jobs. It's more about enhancing individuals and roles. And those who are using AI well are being more successful than those who aren't.

"Our consultants will, as they've always done, strive increasingly to make sure that our clients are getting valuable outcomes out of our work."

• The "Big Four" accounting firms employ about 1.5 million people worldwide. 
• Many of these employees make six-figure salaries and are eligible for annual bonuses.  
• Business Insider analyzed data to determine how much employees are paid at these firms. 

The so called "Big Four" accounting firms — Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), KPMG, and Ernst & Young (EY) — are known for paying their staff high salaries. 

An entry-level consultant who just graduated from business school can make over $200,000 a year at the four firms when you include base salary, bonuses, and relocation expenses. 

Several of these firms have faced layoffs and implemented hiring freezes over the past year as demand for consulting services has waned. Still, they're a good bet for anyone looking to land a six-figure job straight out of school. 

Business Insider analyzed the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification's 2023 disclosure data for permanent and temporary foreign workers to find out what PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte paid US-based employees for jobs ranging from entry-level to executive roles. We looked through entries specifically for roles related to management consulting and accounting. This data does not reflect performance bonuses, signing bonuses, and compensation other than base salaries.

Here's how much Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and EY paid their hires.  

Deloitte paid senior managers between $91,603 to $288,000

With 457,000 employees worldwide, Deloitte employs the most people of any of the 'Big Four.' It pulled in close to $64.9 billion in revenue for the 2023 fiscal year, marking a 9.4% increase from 2022.

Deloitte did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its salary data or 2024 hiring plans.

Here are the salary ranges for consulting and accounting roles: 

• Analyst: $49,219 to $337,500 (includes advisory, business, project delivery, management, and systems)
• Senior business analyst: $97,739 
• Audit and assurance senior assistant: average $58,895
• Consultant: $54,475 to $125,000 (includes advisory, technology strategy, and strategic services)  
• Global business process lead: $180,000 
• Senior consultant: average $122,211
• Manager: average $152,971
• Tax manager: average $117,268
• Senior manager: $91,603 to $288,000  
• Managing director: average $326,769
• Tax managing director: average $248,581
• Principal: $225,000 to $875,000

Principals at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) can make well over $1 million.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is a global professional services firm with over 370,000 employees worldwide. The firm reported a revenue of more than $53 billion for the 2023 fiscal year, marking a 5.6% increase from 2022. 

PwC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its salary data or 2024 hiring plans.

Here are the salary ranges for both consulting and accounting roles. 

• Associate: $68,000 to $145,200
• Senior associate: $72,000 to $197,000 
• Manager: $114,300 to $231,000
• Senior manager: $142,000 to $251,000 
• Director: $165,000 to $400,000  
• Managing director: $260,000 to $330,600
• Principal: $1,081,182 to $1,376,196

KPMG offers managing directors anywhere between $230,000 to $485,000

KPMG has over 273,000 employees worldwide. The firm reported a revenue of $36 billion for the 2023 fiscal year, marking a 5% increase from 2022. 

KPMG did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its salary data or 2024 hiring plans.

Here are the salary ranges for consultants, accountants, and leadership at KPMG. 

• Associate: $61,000 to $140,000
• Senior associate: $66,248 to $215,000
• Director: $155,600 to $260,000
• Associate director: $155,700 to $196,600 
• Specialist director: $174,000 to $225,000
• Lead specialist: $140,500 to $200,000
• Senior specialist: $134,000 to $155,000
• Manager: $99,445 to $293,800
• Senior manager: $110,677 to $332,800
• Managing director: $230,000 to $485,000

Statisticians at Ernst & Young (EY) make salaries ranging between $66,000 to $283,500.

EY employs close to 400,000 people worldwide. For the 2023 fiscal year, the firm reported a record revenue of $49.4 billion, marking a 9.3% jump from 2022. 

The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its salary data or 2024 hiring plans.

Here are the salary ranges for consultants, accountants, auditors, and chief executives at the firm: 

• Accountants and auditors: $54,000 to $390,000
• Appraisers and assessors of real estate: $166,626 to $185,444
• Computer systems analyst: $62,000 to $367,510
• Management analyst: $49,220 to $337,500
• Statistician: $66,000 to $283,500
• Financial risk specialist: $62,000 to $342,400
• Actuaries: $84,800 to $291,459
• Economist: $77,000 to $141,000
• Logisticians: $72,000 t0 $275,000
• Mathematicians: $165,136 to $377,000
• Computer and information systems manager: $136,167 to $600,000
• Financial manager: average $320,000

Aman Kidwai and Weng Cheong contributed to an earlier version of this post.