KPMG Envisions AI as Part of Every Job in Its Global Workforce

KPMG partners who lead the firm’s global AI strategy are pursuing a quest to weave generative AI into all aspects of the organization’s work and touch every corner of its global network.

Armed with a $2 billion war chest, they’re trying to transform KPMG so its 270,000 workers are trained to use generative artificial intelligence from drafting meeting minutes to analyzing tax documents, from writing spreadsheet formulas to letting their staffers experiment with novel uses in a safe, digital sandbox.

“We’re attempting to put AI into everything we do,” said Steve Chase, vice chair of AI and digital innovation for KPMG US. “That is our mission statement.”

Almost all of the 220 top executives at companies the US firm surveyed recently said they planned to invest in generative AI over the next year with nearly half doling out at least $100 million. And KPMG, which offers services from accounting to technology implementation, wants to be in position to compete for their business, said David Rowlands, KPMG’s global head of artificial intelligence.

Bloomberg Tax recently sat down with Chase and Rowlands to discuss the firm’s AI vision.

The newest form of the technology could be used to help marketing teams write copy faster or assist software developers to check the code they’re writing. Corporations could also use it to track and manage regulations and other legal obligations, Chase said.

Mission: AI

Training KPMG’s army of accountants and business consultants to use generative AI has been a top focus of the firm. The company wants those professional to serve as ambassadors of the technology, demonstrating how it could be used and knowledgeable enough to answer clients questions, Rowlands said.

In January, the firm held a 24-hour marathon of training for staff at affiliates around the world and across service lines.

Chase wants KPMG professionals to be able to answer clients’ top questions including how to use AI tools, he said.

One of the challenges is developing training courses that keep pace with the technology’s rapid development. “The tech can change faster than the people can change,” Chase said.

He predicts that AI skills will become a necessity for workers from accountants to coders to master to remain competitive in the labor market.

Promised productivity gains however raise fresh questions about the firm’s own strategies—like whether to expand the role of its support centers that dot the globe and what type of work those locations should handle, Chase said.

But the transition to generative AI provides an opportunity for the firm to grow. “There will be more roles for KPMG as a consequence,” Rowlands said.

The Big Four firm is trying to get ahead of demand from clients, which is expected to soar over the coming year as companies pivot from experimenting with generative AI to preparing for wide-scale adoption.

As a model to its clients, KPMG aims to demonstrate how it adopted the technology, the two leaders said. That includes supporting its workers to incorporate the controls needed to return reliable, verifiable results.

Billions Planned

KPMG has leaned heavily on its partnership with Microsoft to put OpenAI and the tech giant’s copilot virtual assistant into the hands of its staffers. But the firm has also designed its own generative AI functions including a tool for tax clients to research their own documents a feature of the firm’s tax platform announced last month.

Some tried-and-true methods are proving tough to supplant, however, including spreadsheet software that for decades has been the workhorse of CPA firms and accounting departments.

KPMG staff now turn to generative AI to help them construct formulas for Excel—making spreadsheet queries one of the most common AI prompts, Chase said.

It’s a race with competitors who are taking similar strides to help their clients find the best use cases and roll out tools that could reshape their workforce.

The other Big Four firms weren’t far behind touting their AI bona fides when the technology burst onto the scene roughly a year ago.

Since then, PwC’s US arms committed to spending at least $1 billion on the nascent technology. The firm has put generative AI into the hands of its staff lawyers and clients including a tool announced last month that can redline contracts and extract data among other features.

Backed by a $1.4 billion investment, EY launched its own version of ChatGPT, called EYQ, in October to help the firm’s professionals brainstorm and conduct research. The firm has also made AI training available to its 400,000-person global workforce and launched a series of services to help clients adopt and to set up governance over the technolog, the firm said.

Deloitte’s US affilite has launched a batch of tools to help its tax practice take the bite out of busy seasons, including a tool that lets staff describe how it wants data formatted. Other tools help staff prioritize what areas of a tax return to scrutinize.

—with assistance from Isabel Gottlieb.