Hong Kong accounting firms’ eye 2026 hiring rise amid in AI adoption

Hong Kong-based accounting firms program to proceed expanding their workforce successful 2026 portion expanding the usage of artificial quality (AI), positioning the exertion arsenic a instrumentality to enactment unit and pull caller entrants to the profession, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported citing manufacture players.

KPMG China spouse of audit prime and nonrecreational signifier Andrew Wong was quoted by SCMP arsenic saying: “We bash not judge AI is simply a replacement for humans, and we person not seen immoderate simplification successful hiring successful the past nor bash we program to [reduce hiring] successful future. We spot AI and our radical arsenic complementary to each other.”

Wong said AI had improved prime and ratio and was besides supporting endowment attraction and retention.

He added that AI was enabling KPMG China’s accountants to instrumentality connected caller and antithetic occupation roles, which was “exactly what young radical are looking for”.

He besides said that, successful the discourse of large data, AI was effectual successful parsing trends and detecting anomalies from ample information sets, portion helping to analyse analyzable issues.

Other large firms person outlined hiring plans alongside AI deployment. Deloitte China said successful October that it planned to prosecute astir 1,000 radical successful Hong Kong and put HK$500m ($64m) implicit the adjacent 4 years to grow capabilities successful fintech, superior markets operations and AI.

EY elder spouse and person of Asia-Pacific turnaround and restructuring Derek Lai Kar-yan was quoted arsenic saying: “Many young professionals are funny successful careers successful indebtedness restructuring and liquidation, but they expect employers to supply AI tools to heighten their efficiency.
“That is wherefore we request to put successful AI to pull young endowment to articulation our team.”

Lai said helium planned to grow his squad from 80 to 130 successful 2026 and expected request for indebtedness restructuring and liquidations could emergence owed to a anemic economy.

He besides said companies were much unfastened to preventive restructuring to accommodate to uncertainties specified arsenic geopolitical tensions and tariffs.

“Restructurings and liquidations impact a ample measurement of documents and transaction records,” Lai said.

“With AI summarising the documents and transcribing minutes of meetings, it saves unit a batch of clip and helps amended efficiency.”

He added that erstwhile helium joined the manufacture 36 years ago, helium spent agelong hours reviewing paperwork owed to the lack of AI tools.

“Now with AI, analysing paperwork has been sped up implicit 10 times, which would marque restructuring and liquidation much absorbing and appealing to young talent,” helium said.

Separately, Manulife Financial Asia non-executive president and Financial Services Development Council manager Damien Green referred to the Microsoft/LinkedIn Annual Work Trend Index, saying employees wanted to usage AI astatine enactment and wanted their companies to drawback up connected adoption.