Deloitte names new UK financial services lead
Deloitte has appointed consulting veteran Suresh Kanwar to head up its financial services division in the UK and join its executive committee.
Kanwar previously led the audit and consultancy behemoth’s banking and capital markets team, and his new new role makes him one of the 13 most senior figures in Deloitte’s 27,000-strong army of UK staff.
He replaces Richard Hammell, who is now responsible for Deloitte’s clients and markets services, having held the top job in its finance business for five years.
“I am thrilled to be leading Deloitte’s financial services practice in the UK,” Kanwar said.
“In an ever-changing economic, regulatory and technological environment, our clients expect us to continually evolve our offering to meet their needs. I’m looking forward to taking on this challenge and bringing our market-leading expertise to them.”
Kanwar’s appointment follows a period of underwhelming performance at Deloitte and across so-called ‘Big Four‘ professional services giants.
All have been making efforts to reduce costs amid stalling profits and slowing growth.
Deloitte has previously pledged to make roughly 800 redundancies in the UK – or three per cent of its local workforce – and slash its travel expenses in half as it bears down on the ballooning overheads it accrued during a lucrative pandemic.
Kanwar, who took the helm of the UK financial services division at the start of March having been at Deloitte since 2016, inherits a division that has itself suffered from flatlining revenues.
Revenue from what is Deloitte’s largest industry group was £1.6bn in its 2024 financial year, just 1.6 cent above on its 2023 earnings and a fall in real terms.
The Big Four’s partnership model has also come under strain, with some looking to simplify their unwieldy local partnership structures whereby national outposts are owned by bosses locally.
On Monday, it was revealed that KPMG was planning to merge dozens of these partnerships – so-called ‘economic units’ – in a drive to bolster growth by pooling resources and capital expenditure.
Richard Houston, chief executive of Deloitte UK, said Kanwar’s experience would make him “fantastic leader” and a “great addition” to the UK executive committee.
He added: “His expertise in delivering large scale global transformation projects and significant understanding of the Financial Services industry will ensure we can best support our clients to respond to a complex and evolving market.”