What is the starting salary for Consulting/Advisory at the Big 4?

Advisory - £20Kish outside London £25-£28k in London. Very similar to audit.

In Deloitte, consulting is about £32K (plus an approx extra £2k joining bous/relocation allowance).

jungle_boogie ... the numbers you're giving here are really low... how sure are you about it ??

what makes you think they're low?
I know at one of the Big4 the starting salary for advisory is £28.5k in london. This is what a friend was offered 6 weeks ago.

so, it seems that the advisory salary is the same as assurance. in assurance, the company pays for the ACA or ICAS, but in advisory, there is no such costs....... so, i thought, they must be paying more in Advisory, but it doesnt seem like it.... oh well.... thanks for the input guys

that's not necessarily the case- the big4 have actuarial departments within advisory. It takes up to 7 years to pass all those exams. Each department will have different costs, but as a new-starter I think it's best that you start on a pretty much even keel with everyone else.

ahh... yes, except for the Actuary, the rest of the Advisory/Consulting positions dont offer any significant qualification.

@arby and titer, I know about these numbers from personal experience of working in advisory within the Big 4. Your quote of £28.5k isn't much different from what I said earlier - £25 to £28k. Advisory really doesn't pay much more than audit. In some cases, with advisory, you still have to do the ACA qualification or some other qualification. It's best to do the research and find out what qualifications come with the role as the salary will pretty much be the same as audit if you have to do a qualification.

@IBD_Haunter, a lot of advisory roles do have qualifications. You need to do the research before hand. You are right though, if there is no qualification with the role, then the salary will be slightly higher than the ones quoted above. Consulting however tends not to have any qualifications at all so that's almost always guaranteed to be higher.

Hi

I can also confirm that the figures quoted are about correct. Also I dont know about all the Big 4 firms but in advisory at PwC and at least some of the advisory positions at Deloitte you still have to do your ACA qualifications so it seems fair that you would get the same salary as others doing these qualifications.

hmm.... if you are doing the ACA or similar qualification then the same salary is completely fair. I was just looking at EY Advisory roles, they dont seem to provide the ACA or similar qualitfication.... maybe they offer a higher salary then...

I see that you have confirmed the numbers... so it means that basically the salary is the same as it was 2 years ago.. not to sound greedy but 28K for 10-12 hours a day of work or sometimes more... that's low...

Two things to point out though, if you have to do the ACA qualification in an Advisory role, you will have to work in audit. It's part of the requirements for the ACA to spend time in Audit as well. Chances are, you'll do more audit work than advisory work if you are doing the ACA qualification.

@titer, Advisory isn't really 10-12 hour days. Advisory tends to be more decent hours (moreso outside London than in London).

Guys,

I occasionally have a read of this website and having a look at this thread wanted to clarify a few of the rumours above.

1. It is not a requirement of the ACA to spend time Audit work (it used to be), so although some of the Big 4 make you do some Audit work you may not have to. Chargeable hours in Advisory count towards your qualification the same way as Audit hours do, however the Audit students will have a bit of head start especially in A&A and FA exams.

2. 'Advisory' is a very generic term e.g consulting, corporate finance, pensions / actuarial. All have different hours, structure, qualifications. Be specific about what dept you are talking about and you'll find it easier to get the info you require.

3. The salary structure is quite different across service lines (audit lowest, tax, corp finance, consulting highest) with quite a difference between the top and the bottom. Generally'advisory roles' are higher salaries, with higher incremental increases and given the fact there are less grads you get treated much better and are given more opportunities. All worth bearing in mind.

And don't fool yourself, roles like these at big 4s are long hours. My timesheets rarely have single figure hour days.

In the big scheme of things over a year, after tax the difference between £28 and £32k really isn't much. It shouldn't be a factor in your decision at this stage - if it is look at salaries post qualification.

Good luck!

Littlelegs, thank you very much for the valuable information.

Are performance bonuses significant? do big4s offer joining bonuses?

Thanks in advance guys.

littlelegs would you happen to be someone with initials TL from a Brum based uni who enjoys cricket?

I agree with littlelegs on being specific about the department you wanna be in within advisory. They are very different.

I do have to disagree regarding the ACA requirements. You DEFINITELY have to spend some time performing company audit. It doesn't have to be ALL of your qualifying time but it has to be a certain (pre-stated) portion of the time. The rest can be spent in Advisory or Tax...etc but you will need to spend some time in Audit. To clarify this, it's probably best to just give the ICAEW a call and I'm sure they can state what the current requirements are.

Also, regarding the hours at the Big 4, I guess it depends on your office (London offices always tend to work longer than regional offices) but the most 'extra' time I ever spent outside my contracted hours was 15 minutes! In all fairness to littlelegs - the contract hours are usually 9-5, 9.30 - 5.30 or 9-5.30 which is pretty much 9/9.5 hours anyway so double figures are easily done. (However there was a one off when I worked from about 2pm till 2am and back the next day from 9am till 8pm).

The difference between £28k and £32k after tax and NI is circa £230 per month. It's up to the individual to decide if this difference is big enough to sway a decision either ways.

@tee234, performance bonuses at the Big 4 are not particularly impressive. You'll be lucky if you get a couple of grand and it is very dependent on the performance of the business area as a whole, as well as your office/region though there is an element of individual performance factored into it. (You might get something extra for being at the top of your class in the professional exams).

With regards to joining bonuses, you get an interest free loan for 4 years (7K) or a one off payment of £2/2.5k.... In consultancy, you might get a £1.5k or £2k relocation allowance.

(Apologies if you spot any typos - didn't have time to proof read this before posting it).

Hey guys, I recently received an offer from PwC for consulting for £27.5k, which I thought was a bit low for consulting to be honest. Plus they don't actually mention the job title in the contract they sent, only 'Associate'. I remember friends saying consulting at the Big 4 paid at least £30k, although that was a few years ago....

If anybody has any info on this then I would really appreciate it, as I am now considering whether to continue with my other applications or whether it wouldn't be better to do Tax accounting or Advisory where I become ACA qualified.

In my opinion, this is pretty good. PwC will always give you the market rate...There is nothing wrong in purusing your other applications but just bear in mind that if you are working for PwC, it is very likely that you will working with the top business names and the loss in income will be compensated by the calibre of clients that you are working with...maybe I am biased in favour of PwC. Probably other consulting firms will give you more money but they are not the No.1 Graduate Employer :)

I seem to be very biased!!

Deloitte Consulting LLP offer £31,500 with a £600 bonus to graduates.

PwC may be the top graduate employer, but Deloitte are voted Number 1 on BusinessWeek's 2009 Best Place to Launch a Career, and are rated as the 5th best consulting firm in the world (higher than the other Big 4)!

Thanks guys,

Do you know anything about how the salary progresses from starting? I am intrigued as to how they increase pay and when. I know with other service lines that include study for professional services you may have your salary increased upon completion of certain targets, but if you are not studying towards a qualification how will they increase the salary and will you lose out over time?

I am beginning to question my long-held understanding that consultants *always* earn more...

Didn't the other big 4 (or certainly PwC ) sell off their consultancy business? PwC is now buiding its consultancy back up again and are recruiting like mad.
Poaching from other consultancies.

They all sold their consultancies except Deloitte. The other 3 are trying to build up their advisory/consultancy service lines. I can't speak for the others, but PwC's consulting is doing really well relatively speaking (only service line to grow in FY09 and trying to treble revenue in next 4 years)

@bigdogbazooka, the salary won't change that much for 2-3 years.

You don't have to do Audit for ACA

People who do ACA in industry or public sector roles (outside of National Audit Office) rarely do audit work - and smaller practice firms may not even have any audit clients

any one know the staring salary for Advisory of EY in London?

£31.5 + £7k interest free loan

The £7k interest free loan (and no tax on benefit in kind re the interest forgone) is standard with Big 4 for ACA grads too.

hi, brizzle, are you sure that is the starting salary for Advisory of EY in London?

Don't get me wrong, it's just many people reply and say somewhere between 27-28k.

I got an offer to start last year for EY Advisory (which I didn't take) which was £29,000. This was up on the preivous year by about £500 if I remember correctly due to inflation.

It wouldn't suprise me if EY have increased it but surely not by that amount as it would put their entire pay scale out? EY advisory got hit probably the hardest during the recession out of the Big 4 deferring most of their advisory grad intake and making loads of redundancies (even 2nd/ 3rd years which is not common practice) so I can't really see them suddenly handing out large pay increases.

I agree with littlelegs. If you get any increment on the prior year, it'll probably be no higher than an extra £500. Chances are it's the same as last year.

@ jungle_boogie

HR at PwC told me that the next grade, Senior Associate, has a salary of between £34.5 and £46k, which can take anything from 18 months to 3 years to reach from scratch.

Senior Associate positions are reached after two years. It's almost automatic at the Big 4 (unless you are particularly bad at your job). There is usually a significant salary jump (relatively) from Associate to Senior Associate level. 1 - 2 years are Associates and 3 (-4) years are Senior Associates.

This ties up pretty much with the ACA program as newly qualified ACAs (ie you qualify at end of year 3) get circa £46k.

I thought consulting in the Big 4 got paid more? Is this just a myth then? I don't really understand how consultants and accountants would be on similar pay after 3 years. Nor did I really understand how accountants would be paid less despite studying harder for important qualifications...

Hey I also got an offer for PwC consulting in London. It says they haven't finalised salaries for 2010 starters but last year's was £27,250.

I really don't understand why they would offer salaries 10-15% less than Deloitte if they're hoping to treble revenue from Consulting over the next 5 years and be the "iconic" brand.

I think I'll continue with my Deloitte interviews and consider my options if I get offered a position there too. As stated above, in the end there's only going to be a £2.5K post-tax difference, tops. Not huge, but it does seem strange to accept an offer where the rewards could theoretically even decrease from last year's levels.

I think it's unfair to say Consultants won't be working as hard as Accountants - Consulting grads work significantly longer hours and will not experience the same sharp rise in salary as ACA guys do upon qualifying or passing various stages. And bear in mind many consultants will also be studying for CIMA etc. which requires just as much commitment as an ACA but will not be granted the same amount of study/college leave as accounting students. I'm going to be in that boat and it's going to be very hard indeed!!
Accountants are rewarded as they receive expensive training and thus upon qualifying will see a significant jump in salary. I think ACA is circa £10 grand if you wanted to do it privately, perhaps even more when you counter all the support you will get. So in reality whilst you may have £28k in your pocket, your cost to the firm is something closer to £40-45k (perhaps even more!)

Cost to the firm is irrelevant as the charge out rates for grads are high anyway, and (relatively speaking in % terms) a lot higher for corporate finance/consulting than they are for audit.

Think about how quickly you generate revenue for the firm - for sake of argument charge out at £250 x 10 hr chargeable days = £2500 per day x 5 days a week = £12.5k per week. Doesn't take too long, assuming recovery of c. 40% to cover your costs.

How elsedo you think these firms make a profit per partner of anything upwards of £600k pa?