By Fiona Czerniawska.
Our latest report on UK consulting pegs growth in this market at 8.2%, that’s up from 6.6% in 2014 and means that, for the second year running, the UK is one of the world’s most attractive consulting markets.
Inevitably, though, growth isn’t spread evenly across all industries or service lines: two areas stand out.
The first is risk and regulation. That’s not a new story, but it does have a bit of a new twist to it. As we’ve pointed out before, demand is bifurcating, with the more familiar areas being commoditised and industrialised, as clients seek to limit the overall amount of money they have to spend in this area, and the less familiar areas commanding greater executive attention and higher fee rates. We thought that might lead to a slow-down in growth overall, because the bulk of consulting falls into the first, commoditised category and because clients here are seeking to bring fee rates down even if they can’t reduce their actual workload, but it appears that the amount of regulatory change is still more than enough to maintain demand. The risk and regulatory consulting market, worth just over £500m in 2015*, grew by 12%.
