AI adoption slashes workloads at UK firms – and may offer a long-awaited boost to national productivity

When partners at the accounting and professional services firm Moore Kingston Smith (MKS) first began trialling AI-powered workflows, they expected efficiencies. What they did not expect was a transformation. Tasks that once swallowed two weeks of staff time are now being completed in as little as two hours. For an industry built on meticulous compliance checks, audit trails and data-heavy reporting, the shift has been nothing short of seismic.

Inside MKS’s offices, staff describe the transition as moving from “wading through paperwork” to “finally having room to think”. Routine work that previously required line-by-line scrutiny—such as processing large financial datasets, reviewing transactions, or preparing client-ready reports—has been automated through large-language-model tools capable of scanning, summarising and flagging anomalies at remarkable speed.

These systems do not merely accelerate existing processes; they reshape them. A compliance check that once demanded days of manual comparison can now run in the background while employees focus on judgement-driven tasks. The result, according to the firm, is faster turnaround for clients, reduced operational strain and a noticeable uplift in profitability.

For many in the sector, this is more than a story of one firm’s efficiency drive. It is a window into what economists have long argued the UK urgently needs: a step-change in productivity, particularly in the service industries that dominate the economy. Britain has struggled with sluggish productivity growth for over a decade, trailing behind many of its international peers. With services accounting for around 80% of national output, improvements in areas like accounting, legal services, consulting and finance would carry outsized economic weight.

This is why so many people are interested in MKS's experience. Economists say that if these kinds of changes were made in thousands of service-sector businesses, both big and small, the overall effect could be revolutionary. Faster workflows cut down on the time lost to administrative bottlenecks. Automated data analysis lowers the number of mistakes. Employees can go from checking boxes to working with clients, giving strategic advice, and being creative.

But there is more to the story than just the top-line numbers. People who used to spend their mornings working on spreadsheets now say they feel "relieved" and have a "newfound sense of purpose." Junior auditors say they are learning faster because AI tools show them trends and outliers that they can then look into instead of having to search for them manually. Senior partners say that client engagements have become more relevant because they can now spend more time presenting ideas instead of chasing data.

But there are some worries about the change. Some employees talk about how much automation there will be in private and whether their jobs will change so much that they won't recognize them. Experts in the field say that the real potential lies in adding to the workforce rather than replacing it. This way, people can use their experience, judgment, and ethical oversight while machines take care of routine tasks and large amounts of work.

For now, companies like MKS give us a taste of what a tech-enabled, more productive UK economy might look like: faster, more efficient, more competitive, and maybe a little less bogged down in red tape. If this keeps up, artificial intelligence might finally be able to solve the country's long-standing productivity problem.