Consultancy.uk recently featured an opinion piece by Joris Van der Gucht, co-founder and CEO of Ravical, drawing on new research into how UK accounting firms are losing advisory revenue, despite holding the strongest possible position with their clients.

The gap is bigger than most firms realise

Ravical's research report, The State of Advisory in Accounting, which polled 500 senior decision-makers across UK accounting firms, found that businesses now purchase more than a third (36%) of advisory services from providers other than their primary accounting firm. Nearly half of respondents said between 26–40% of client advisory spend goes elsewhere. A further 31% believe more than 40% leaves the firm entirely.

This is striking. Accounting firms already hold the primary client relationship. They understand the financial history of the business, see transactions in detail, and interact with management regularly. And yet a significant share of advisory revenue still ends up elsewhere.

Van der Gucht argues the answer comes down to structure and identifies four structural weaknesses driving the problem.

1. Advisory is accidental rather than systematic

Client conversations regularly contain the seeds of valuable advisory work. A business owner mentions hiring plans. Someone asks about financing. A major purchase comes up in passing. These are live signals, but in most firms, they get buried in inboxes, calls and personal notes. Opportunities are captured only if the right adviser happens to notice at the right time. When advisory depends on individual awareness rather than shared systems, it becomes inconsistent. That inconsistency is where competitors step in.

2. The people closest to clients aren't structured to act on what they see

The professionals who interact most frequently with clients are typically compliance-focused. Their workflows are built around accuracy, deadlines and risk management, not commercial opportunity. Even when compliance automation creates capacity, the advisory revenue doesn't automatically follow. A gap opens up between those who see the signals and those equipped to convert them.

3. Advisory is constrained by senior capacity

Compliance can be standardised and scaled. Advisory? That's a different story. At least in the way most firms currently operate. Senior advisers must interpret context, apply judgement and manage relationships. More advisory work simply means more senior time, and senior expertise is the scarcest resource in professional services. In many firms, experienced advisers spend a disproportionate share of their time on preparation rather than client-facing work, which caps how far advisory can scale.

4. Clients are more informed than ever

AI is accelerating this shift. Ravical's research found that 64% of businesses were consulting tools like ChatGPT before contacting their accountant, arriving with their own interpretations already formed. The profession's value once rested significantly on access to specialist knowledge. As that knowledge becomes widely and cheaply accessible, the differentiator moves to judgement, context and trusted guidance. Firms still leading with information rather than interpretation risk losing ground.

Three deeper layers of disruption

Van der Gucht frames these four weaknesses against a broader transformation reshaping the profession.

• The first layer is economic: compliance is unlikely to be the primary growth engine going forward, yet advisory remains difficult to scale inside operating models built for compliance.

• The second is knowledge: AI systems can now interpret much of the technical and legislative information that intermediaries once held exclusively, changing where professional value sits.

• The third is business logic: traditional accounting software encoded rigid rules, while modern AI models reason through those same rules dynamically, making the technology stack itself more flexible.

Intent without infrastructure

89% of accounting firms believe advisory will be their primary driver of growth in the years ahead.

The ambition is there. What's missing, Van der Gucht argues, is the infrastructure to let advisory emerge consistently across the firm rather than depending on individual awareness and luck.

Until firms rethink how advisory opportunities are detected, prepared and delivered, the gap between intent and reality will persist. And that gap is precisely where competitors continue to capture the revenue.

Read the full opinion piece on Consultancy.uk.