The AI Audit Race: Why Planning Is the Right Place to Start

A pivotal moment

The audit firm of 2035 will look nothing like that of today.

Much has been written about the “adapt to AI or die” moment for the accountancy sector as a whole. What many expected to be a gradual shift is now set to take place on a compressed timeline, thanks to the combination of private equity consolidation and advances in foundational models. This is even more acute in audit given the lower margins and differentiation compared to advisory service lines.

The Big Four are in an arms race to build AI audit platforms in-house. PwC has said they expect to run fully automated audits by the end of this year. These behemoths will win short-term market share as first movers, but it’s an expensive way to build technology that will quickly become outdated.

Most of the rest of the market won’t adapt fast enough. This creates a short window opportunity for nimble, forward-thinking firms to commit early and partner well. The prize: compounding margin and market share advantage that will be near-impossible to catch.

Automate planning first

AI hasn’t touched much of the audit technology landscape, yet. Case management and substantive testing tools have added AI features around the fringes, but it’s far from their core product. As a result, most firms’ audit processes remain highly manual, Excel- and email-heavy.

The planning phase is the natural launchpad for large-scale automation. If planning is weak, everything downstream expands: testing, review time, rework, partner involvement. If planning is strong, the rest of the audit contracts: increasing margins, quality and compliance all at once.

Applying AI at this point in the lifecycle also leverages what LLMs are best at: document analysis, structuring and comparison. The auditor’s role shifts to review, with time freed up for the complex financial judgement only they can exercise.

Introducing Platformed

Platformed brings AI into the heart of planning: transforming the process for auditors and their clients, with full integration into existing delivery models.

Our initial product helped firms like Menzies to automate IT control assessments in a fifth of the time, all while delivering more robust and compliant analysis for clients.

Our latest release extends our AI agents across the full planning phase: transforming the way auditors assess the risk of material misstatement at the outset of an audit. This delivers a step-change in quality and frees up thousands of associate, manager and partner hours both during planning and downstream.

Prior to this, our core team built a high-growth fintech called PassFort, exiting to Moody’s in 2021. We’ve built Platformed using the combination of deep workflow understanding, integrations and security we learned are essential to successful products in this space.

This is just the beginning. In addition to enhancing more external auditor work, we are working on product extensions for internal audit: bringing firms closer to their end clients and opening up new revenue lines in the process.