UK firms face AI value gap as client pressure mounts

Thomson Reuters has reported a widening gap in the UK between what corporate clients expect from AI-enabled professional services and what providers are delivering. The findings suggest UK firms face stronger client pressure on AI than peers in other English-speaking markets covered by the survey.

New data from the Future of Professionals 2026 report found that 78% of UK corporate clients said AI-enabled quality improvement from professional services firms was essential or very important. Yet only 7% said most or all of their providers were genuinely delivering that improvement.

That disparity is beginning to affect commercial relationships. The report found that 20% of UK corporate respondents planned within 12 months to start reconsidering relationships with professional firms that do not demonstrate clear AI-enabled value.

Applied to the UK legal and accounting markets, Thomson Reuters estimated that about £20bn in client revenue was under active consideration.

The figures point to sharper pressure in Britain than in other comparable markets in the study. Some 71% of UK firms reported significant or some client pressure to act on AI, compared with 22% in the US.

Jas Sandhu Dade, head of corporates, Europe at Thomson Reuters, said the shift was already under way in routine dealings between clients and advisers.

"UK professional services firms are under more client pressure to demonstrate AI value than any other English-speaking market in our survey - and yet the gap between what clients expect and what firms are delivering has never been wider," Dade said.

"The firms that treat this as a future problem are already behind. The evaluation is happening now, in the margins of every client interaction, and the ones that don't make their AI capability visible will lose relationships before they get the chance to make the case."

Governance gaps

The research also found signs that AI use inside professional organisations is moving faster than internal controls. Nearly a quarter of UK professionals, 23%, said they were already using AI tools that their organisation had not approved.

That trend has exposed uncertainty over responsibility when AI-assisted work goes wrong. Among UK professionals, 37% said they believed they should be personally accountable for AI-assisted errors, while 40% said accountability should be shared.

The lack of agreement over ownership of risk suggests many organisations are still working through how AI fits into existing professional standards, review processes and management structures. In legal and accounting work in particular, questions of responsibility have direct implications for client trust and internal oversight.

Strategy divide

The report argued that the main obstacle is not access to tools but the lack of a coherent plan for using them. Across the global data set, 66% of professionals in firms and departments with a named AI strategy said AI was meeting or exceeding expectations for creating value.

Where no active strategy existed, that figure fell to 22%. The gap suggests a close link between formal planning and the ability to turn AI spending into visible gains in service quality or efficiency.

Among the most common reasons for stalled strategies, 47% said tools were not yet in place, 43% said people were not equipped or trained to work in the intended way, 32% said the strategy had not been translated into clear operational priorities, and 30% said there was no shared understanding of the direction.

Those findings suggest implementation issues, rather than the software itself, are holding back results. Training, management clarity and operational follow-through appear to matter more than simple access to AI products.

Talent pressure

The survey also pointed to strain inside organisations as employees compare formal AI plans with daily reality. Among UK professionals, 28% said their organisation's AI strategy did not match what was actually happening in their day-to-day work.

Of those experiencing that mismatch, 28% said they were already considering leaving within two years. The data suggests that internal credibility on AI is becoming a workforce issue as well as a client-facing one.

Mid-career professionals were identified as the most exposed group, reflecting their role in day-to-day operations and their greater mobility in the labour market. For firms trying to retain experienced staff while reshaping service delivery, that creates another layer of pressure alongside client demands.

The UK findings present a picture of a market in which clients are asking for evidence of better work through AI, employees are adopting tools faster than governance frameworks are catching up, and many firms have yet to settle basic questions of responsibility and execution. In that environment, the gap between expectation and delivery is becoming a commercial issue rather than a technical one.