Do you think you can do your boss's job? If you're a junior accountant, you'll know immediately.
New recruits at PWC play the role that managers have done within three years. This was spoken to Business Insider in an interview to oversee the AI running AI of PWC's AI assurance leader Jenn Kosar.
“People are going to walk through the door to become reviewers and supervisors almost instantly,” she said.
PWC, one of the Big Four's accounting and consulting companies, deploys AI to take over tasks such as data collection and processing. This allows entry-level employees to focus freely on “more sophisticated and value-added jobs,” Kosar said.
“Three years from now, we'll feel our first year is working like four,” she said. “We look back and say, 'Now, these young people feel like managers of my time.' ”
AI is rethinking how PWC trains junior employees
Kosar said the technology means PWC is changing the way junior employees are trained, adding that entry-level workers need to know how to review and oversee AI jobs.
If Big Four's company focused on teaching younger employees to perform audit tasks, she said it now focuses on more “back to basics” training and the fundamentals of what auditing should do for clients.
Programming has time to in-depth teaching junior employees critical thinking, negotiation and “professional skepticism.”
Jenn Kosar is the head of PWC's AI Assurance. PWC
“AI Guarantee”
AI is rapidly pushing the industry in new directions. Kosar was a partner in the Digital Assurance and Transparency division before his role as AI Assurance Lead was created in July 2024. PWC's “AIS ASSURAGE for AI” products have been working with clients to ensure that the AI used is operated responsibly and have only been around since June.
For all of that potential, AI is challenging Big Four's long-standing business model, organizational structure and daily roles.
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Instead of charging clients hourly, businesses should consider outcome-based pricing models based on results.
Alan Paton, a former partner at PWC UK's Financial Services Division, now CEO of Google Cloud Solutions Consultancy, previously told Business Insider that automation could increasingly question why clients need to pay consultants a lot of money.
While AI is already transforming the roles of more juniors, Kosar said the technology will ultimately impact advanced players.
She added that partners and managers need to adapt to new types of requests from clients asking how AI will take over a particular business task entirely.
“This is a change in how we serve our clients rather than accelerate the progress of our functionality,” Kosar told BI.
Kosar admitted that AI could reduce the ability to think critically and replace work, but she said she thought it would lead to experts who would provide better information and develop faster.
“We actually get to a better place in terms of how audits work, how consulting works, how we can focus on higher value insights and information,” she added.
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