Silverfin survey: 43% of UK accountants plan to quit within a year

Nearly half of UK accounting professionals are planning to leave the profession within the next twelve months, according to new research from Silverfin, the cloud-first accountancy SaaS platform owned by Visma. The figure stands at 43%, up sharply from 9% recorded in the equivalent survey last year, and is the headline finding of a report published on 15 September 2026 covering five European markets.

The survey, conducted by Censuswide in July 2026, polled 500 mid-to-senior employees at accounting firms across the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Denmark, with 100 respondents per market. Across all five markets, 33% said they plan to leave the profession within a year. Luxembourg recorded the highest rate at 48%, with Belgium at 37%, Denmark at 24%, and the Netherlands at 15%.

Demand outstripping capacity

The retention crisis sits alongside a separate but related capacity crunch. More than half of European respondents (53%) said they regularly receive more advisory service requests than they can fulfil, with the figure reaching 78% in Luxembourg. In the UK, 46% report the same. The remaining 44% of European respondents said this happens at least sometimes; not a single accountant surveyed said it never occurs.

Advisory and consultancy work already represents a material share of revenue: 91% of UK respondents said it accounts for at least 21% of their firm's income. Yet firms cannot scale this line of business because skilled staff are bogged down in repetitive, low-margin tasks. More than half of UK respondents regularly work across four or five separate bookkeeping systems, and 31% still rely on manual Excel reconciliation. Across all markets, two in five spend at least 31 minutes a day moving data between systems.

Recruitment is compounding the problem. Ninety-two per cent of UK respondents reported at least one open vacancy, and 41% said roles typically take twelve weeks or longer to fill.

An Maes, chief executive of Silverfin, said: "Accountants are losing too much time to repetitive tasks to be able to do that advisory work. With more than half of accountants unable to keep up with demand for advice, there's a clear gap between what businesses expect and what firms can deliver."

The survey estimated that automating routine tasks could reclaim 1.46 hours per working day per accountant, equivalent to roughly 40 working days a year. At average charge rates across the five markets, Silverfin calculates this translates to approximately €67,000 in potential billable value per accountant annually; in the UK the equivalent figure is £55,000, converted using the ECB reference rate at end of July 2026.

Technology and regulatory pressure

Nearly half (47%) of European accountants identified AI and automation as the single biggest force for change in their profession, comfortably ahead of economic pressures (11%) and client expectations (10%). UK respondents were more divided: AI and automation led at 24%, but regulatory change followed closely at 22%, with consolidation and M&A, talent shortages and new advisory opportunities each at 12%.

The divergence is notable in the context of a busy UK regulatory environment. HMRC's Making Tax Digital programme continues to extend its scope, and accounting firms serving financial-services clients are navigating FCA consumer duty obligations alongside standard audit and compliance work. These pressures raise the bar for professional expertise while simultaneously increasing the volume of structured data that cloud platforms such as Silverfin are designed to handle.

The broader enterprise software market is watching the professional-services automation category closely. Vendors including Xero, Sage and a number of well-funded AI-native startups are competing to embed workflow automation and AI-assisted advisory tools directly into the accounting stack. Silverfin's research serves a dual purpose: illuminating a genuine workforce crisis and positioning the company's platform as the structural fix. Buyers should weigh both uses of the data when assessing the findings.

The full report, "How Europe's accounting firms can meet rising demand for advisory services", is available on the Silverfin website.