Audit sector faces worsening manpower crunch as options for graduates, junior associates abound

A YEAR and 8 months into her role as an auditor at KPMG, Gina (not her real name) moved to an investment bank to take up a job in the controller’s office. The pay was nearly 50 per cent more and the working hours significantly reduced.

The 29-year-old said she was the first non-senior audit associate the bank had ever hired for her position. After getting a taste of what she could do, her employer hired yet another audit associate from a Big 4 firm — this time, someone with less than a year’s experience.

Within her social circle of 8 at KPMG, she said only 1 person is still with the company; and only 1 in her circle of 6 university batch mates is still in audit. The latest to leave was offered S$8,000 to join a bank, right after being promoted to manager at KPMG with a S$6,300 salary after 6 years on the job.

Such tales are becoming more commonplace, as junior auditors shun the more traditional career path of enduring long hours in the audit industry in exchange for the eventual title of senior audit associate or some other lucrative professional role.

Financial institutions and tech companies are scooping up audit talent, giving younger auditors an earlier exit option.

Kon Yin Tong, managing director of mid-sized accounting firm Foo Kon Tan, told The Business Times that the attrition rate at his firm has more than doubled from the previous year.

“If they do join the profession, their first choice would be the brand name firms. But the demand for accountancy services continues to increase unabated, so the mismatch between supply and demand is real and pressing,” Kon said.

Another mid-sized firm, Baker Tilly Singapore, also observed an increase in people leaving the industry in the past 2 years. The firm attributed the phenomenon to “pandemic fatigue” and the rise of career options in fintech and digital payment.

To make matters worse, the accountancy talent pool has shrunk — with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) taking in fewer accountancy students.

The university, which used to churn out more than 600 accountants yearly, took in only 414 accountancy students last year.

The 10th percentile A-Level grade profile of students tumbled to BBC/C, from AAA/B in 2012 — an indicator of how attractive the accountancy course is to students.

Kon said he gave a talk at a school where the head of department introduced him, saying: “If you can’t study, do accountancy.”

Meanwhile, Fann Kor, chief executive officer of the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants, said the talent shortage in accountancy is now an “urgent issue”.

She added that the accountancy sector is projected to have increased manpower needs this year. Areas projected to see a growth in headcount are business advisory services (6.4 per cent), tax advisory and compliance services (4.8 per cent), corporate support services (2.3 per cent) and audit and assurance services (2.2 per cent), she said.

At recruitment agency Robert Walters, Zen Soh, a manager of commerce finance, said the agency last year received the most hiring requests from accountancy firms in her 8 years of recruitment in the finance space. But she said it has been “extremely tough” to find talent.

Those who have left the industry said remote working arrangements had made the work of auditors tougher, as they could not feel the same team support and camaraderie that once helped them through the difficult times, she added.

On top of that, replacements don’t come in quick enough — meaning those remaining are more likely to suffer burnout.

Tough sell

KPMG announced last month that the starting pay for entry-level professional staff will increase by up to 20 per cent, as about S$25 million will be invested this financial year into pay raises to “recognise quality of talent and delivery”. Another S$30 million investment will be made into the lifelong learning of employees over the next 5 years.

But some said these initiatives might have a limited impact given various other challenges.

Wang Guangzhao, a 37-year-old former auditor, said the amount committed to pay raises isn’t huge: S$25 million across 3,200 employees is approximately S$650 a month per employee — barely enough to compensate for recent pay freezes, he said.

Danny (not his real name), an associate auditor in one of the Big 4 firms, said his job has become more unbearable. In 2020, his average work day was 10 hours during non-peak periods, and 12 to 13 hours during peak periods. But since last year, Danny, who is in his 20s, has been working 12 to 13 hours in non-peak periods, and 15 to 16 hours during peak periods.

For Gina, the former KPMG auditor, the work is also unfulfilling. Rookies are often told to do as the clients say and not challenge the status quo, she said, adding: “It really makes the profession less of a thinker at the start. It doesn’t make people realise their value.”

When she resigned, her manager tried to retain her by offering a transfer into a more advisory role after another year. But this didn’t sit well. “You just transfer me now, or you don’t. I don’t feel like I need to put in any more time for me to earn it,” she said.

Noting that millennials and Gen Z’s make up a majority of exits, Eugenia Ng, associate director of recruitment agency Michael Page Singapore, said: “After 3 to 5 years in audit and advisory, they often seek bigger challenges to achieve bigger learning outcomes.”

Big 4 perspective

The perspective among the Big 4 accounting firms, however, is quite different. PricewaterhouseCoopers declined to comment when approached about talent and retention, but Deloitte and Ernst & Young (EY) reflected optimism in their ability to retain talent. 

Deloitte Singapore’s talent leader Ong Siok Peng said the accounting profession is seeing “its fair share of turnover” in recent years, but the situation is no different in other industries.

In her view, the “war of talent” is driven by the abundance of options in the job market. Notwithstanding that, she said, Deloitte is “still attracting top talent”.

Max Loh, EY’s managing partner for Singapore and Brunei, said the firm’s talent strategy includes “proactive engagement and learning experiences”, and that EY has been able to “recruit and replace the talent who have moved on”.

But Danny, the associate auditor, said the only thing keeping him at his job is the friendships he has fostered with his colleagues. If they were to leave, he said: “What’s stopping me from leaving too?”

In a response to BT after this article was published, KPMG Singapore’s head of people Janice Foo said: “Our approach is that purposeful work, alongside equitable compensation, deliberate investments in professional development and a defined talent growth pathway are the key elements to draw and retain top talent.”

With this, she said, attrition “will be inevitable” since its employees develop skills and knowledge that make them “highly appealing” to the market at large.

It is also “reasonable to expect” that there will be varied personal experiences in one’s journey of growth and development, she added.