KPMG has a new CEO leading its 276,000 staff. Here are the key challenges he faces.

• KPMG has a new global chairman and CEO: Gary Wingrove.
• From AI transformation to an auditing scandal, he's taken over at a turbulent time for consulting.
• Business Insider spoke to industry watchers about the challenges Wingrove faces as he starts his tenure.

KPMG has a new boss.

On October 1, Gary Wingrove took over as global chairman and CEO of the Big Four accounting and consulting firm, succeeding Bill Thomas after an eight-year tenure.

Wingrove joined KPMG in 2000 and most recently held roles as CEO of KPMG Australia from 2013 to 2021 and international COO. He now oversees more than 276,000 employees across KPMG's member firms.

The firms operate as a global network of legally separate firms rather than as a single company, making the role of global chair different from that of a typical corporate CEO.

Big Four leaders typically spend decades building the trust, personal networks, and credibility needed to win an internal election — the way Big Four firms choose their heads.

Once in the role, they are responsible for holding the network together across geographies, monitoring its performance, and stepping in during high-stakes crises.

KPMG did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

When Wingrove's appointment was announced in March, he said that he would aim to create an environment where KPMG employees could thrive.

AI, AI, and more AI

AI is both one of KPMG's biggest growth opportunities and a tricky management challenge.

The Big Four have cast themselves as "client zero" as AI changes the workplace — whatever happens to the rest of the workforce with AI, it probably happened inside the firms first.

Wingrove will be under pressure to ensure all of KPMG's firms innovate quickly and cohesively, and that the workforce can adapt without weakening its pipeline of future managers and partners.

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"In consulting, AI is already reducing the value of some of the more junior, research-heavy and analytical work that has traditionally supported the pyramid," said James Ransome, a partner and consulting lead at executive-search and industry-analysis firm Patrick Morgan.

That raises a longer-term question: how will firms train junior staff if the work they once learned is increasingly automated?

Getting that approach right will involve rethinking both team structures and the development of junior talent, Ransome said.

On the business side, KPMG's US arm recently launched a new Client Technology & Innovation group to develop AI-native products and services that it says will move at Silicon Valley-like speed. The wider firm has invested heavily in AI tools and partnerships.

Driving growth

Wingrove, like his fellow Big Four leaders, is facing down a tougher consulting market.

KPMG is the smallest of the Big Four, both in terms of employee numbers and annual revenue. Its latest full-year financial results suggest that it is growing its business slightly faster than rivals PwC and EY.

The firm's annual revenue grew 5.1% in 2025 to $39.8 billion.

That was driven less by consulting than by KPMG's more traditional business. Audit was up 6%, and KPMG's tax revenues grew notably faster than those of its competitors — up 7.5% compared to around 5.5% at EY and Deloitte, and 1% at PwC. However, advisory grew just 2.9%, lower than its competitors.

AI offers a great pipeline of new consulting business as companies turn to consultants for help figuring out how to use AI and retrain workers. However, it's also disrupting the firms' economics and pricing model, putting pressure on time-based fees that have long underpinned the industry.

Economic uncertainty is also putting pressure on prices and comes as the firms need to invest more in technology, especially AI, Emma Carroll, a consultant at Source Global Research who advises the professional services sector, told Business Insider.

The outlook for consulting services is strong, she said.

"There's no shortage of demand. Two-thirds of organizations expect their use of external support to grow in the next 12-18 months; no one expects it to shrink."

Working across the world

The Big Four's independent network structure is particularly important for the audit function, where firms must navigate local regulations and independence requirements.

But global clients increasingly require cross-border coordination and access to shared specialist capabilities and technology.

PwC US announced in September that it plans to merge its offshoring center in India with the Indian branch of PwC. At EY, global CEO Janet Truncale has merged 18 geographical regions into 10 superregions.

In a video released on his first day, Wingrove announced Connected 2030, a global strategy intended to make KPMG a "more connected, agile and innovative global organization."

KPMG has been the least integrated of the Big Four, with practices that are siloed and run by partners who exert more control over their respective businesses, said Tom Rodenhauser, managing partner of K2 Consulting Research.

That fragmentation could be an advantage if KPMG focuses on key markets and functions, and specializes its offering for different clients rather than trying to be a one-stop shop, said Rodenhauser.

Wingrove is probably well-suited to the challenge of balancing the tension between independence and global cooperation, given his previous role as Global COO, where regional integration and global investment were already part of his remit, James Ransome said.

Dealing with trouble Down Under

One of Wingrove's most pressing challenges will be rebuilding trust after an audit-confidentiality scandal at KPMG Australia.

In March 2026, Australian Labor senator Deborah O'Neill aired whistleblower allegations that KPMG partners had accessed and shared confidential client information internally to help pursue audit work.

The whistleblower had raised concerns with KPMG internally from 2024, but the crisis became public after O'Neill's disclosure.

KPMG has since acknowledged that its initial investigation of the whistleblower's concerns wasn't rigorous enough and confirmed that client information was inappropriately shared inside the firm. Reporting of the scandal has been led by The Australian Financial Review.

The fallout has prompted resignations of several leaders, regulatory and parliamentary scrutiny, and reviews of KPMG relationships by some of its biggest clients and public-sector customers. In August, KPMG Australia said it would reduce its workforce by about 5%.

The Australian situation makes governance and reputation an important part of Wingrove's agenda, said Ransome.

"Reputational issues in one market can quickly become a broader global brand issue," he said.