Former EY executive Jeff Soar says the traditional Big Four model is not broken – but that there is now an opportunity to build a tax advisory firm differently.
His new venture, WTS UK, launched on Monday backed by private capital group EQT Partners, with ambitions to compete with the Big Four accountancy firms, Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the Big Four model,’ Soar says.
‘They do everything, they’re everywhere. But they all have roughly the same model and roughly the same approach. Everything is done in one business, and it’s not that different today than it was when I first started.’
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Instead, he argues, the opportunity lies in experimenting with a different way of organising a tax advisory firm, particularly as technology and client expectations evolve.
‘I’ve been heavily involved in leadership of big firms for a number of years,’ he says. ‘You start to wonder if there’s a different way of doing it now.’
Part of that rethink stems from the way tax advice is often structured inside large firms.
‘You tend to get very specialised tax advisers covering a wide breadth of packages – specialists that you have to plug together,’ he says. ‘But very few people have spent time on the client side understanding what the client actually wants.’
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For Soar, the goal is less about obsessing over rivals and more about building the strongest possible firm.
‘I’m a huge believer in focusing on being the best you can be at something and not worrying so much about what others are doing,’ he says. ‘If you focus on beating the competition, are you really focusing on being the best you can be?’
Leaner structure, greater agility
A key part of WTS UK’s strategy is a leaner operating structure than those of traditional accounting networks.
‘We want to be Big Four quality but more efficient from a cost perspective,’ he says.
Operating with fewer people and less infrastructure, he argues, allows the firm to move faster and deliver services more efficiently.
‘Lower headcount gives you agility,’ he says. ‘The client is paying for the result, not the infrastructure that enables the result.’
That efficiency is not intended to position the firm as a discount option.
‘We’re not a cheap alternative – we’re just being efficient in how we manage our services.’
Internally, the model is designed to allow advisers to focus more on client work.
‘We run a staffing model where people get more time being a tax adviser and less time doing admin,’ he says. ‘The efficiency allows our people to maximise the time they spend on what they do best – giving clients a great service.’
AI as a catalyst
Technology, particularly artificial intelligence, is expected to play a major role in that shift.
‘Tax is probably the best part of professional services for AI,’ Soar says.
AI can help process the vast volumes of data involved in modern tax work, he says, extracting information from clients and linking it quickly across different regulatory frameworks.
However, he stresses that technology will complement rather than replace advisers.
‘We’re not trying to say we’re going to turn off the human and turn on the AI,’ he says. ‘What we’re saying is it’s going to sharpen the human tax adviser.’
A smaller organisation may also be better positioned to adopt new tools quickly.
‘If you’re a Big Four business with 100,000 people in your practice and you want a new AI tool, you need a huge change programme,’ he says. By contrast, a more compact firm can adapt rapidly as technology evolves.
Private equity backing and long-term investment
Backing from EQT also allows the firm to make investments that traditional professional services partnerships can struggle to justify.
‘Most big tax businesses in the UK are traditional full-distribution partnerships,’ he says. ‘You pay out virtually 100 per cent of your profits every year, so making multi-year investment decisions is hard.’
Private equity support, he argues, makes it easier to take a longer-term view.
‘The backing of EQT means you can make better investment decisions and work with a longer-term mindset.’
Beyond funding, he says the investor also brings perspectives from outside the professional services sector.
‘Most of us have grown up in the tax space and professional services environment,’ he says. ‘EQT brings a different perspective and thought process, which helps us challenge some of the ways we’ve always done things.’
Culture and ambition
For many of the senior advisers joining the firm, Soar says, the appeal is the chance to build something different.
‘The number one thing driving people who are talking to us is the desire to do things differently,’ he says.
‘We’ve all been in the industry a long time and we’ve seen the things that work and the things that don’t. That’s the real driver.’
