ICAS’s top Scottish accountants under 35 in profile – James Hamilton, 32, Senior Manager at Ernst & Young in Glasgow

Thirteen Scottish-based accountants have been named among ICAS’s 35 Chartered Accountants (CAs) under 35 for 2017. For 13 days Scottish Financial News, will be profiling each of the Scottish representatives. Today we profile: James Hamilton CA, 32, Senior Manager, Ernst & Young LLP in Glasgow.

James graduated from Glasgow University in 2006 with an accountancy degree and then joined the Baker Tilly ICAS graduate scheme in 2006 as an auditor in Glasgow. After qualifying as a CA, in 2009 he joined EY and progressed to his current role as senior manager, where he is becoming a clear leader locally in the innovation of audit. Using passion and enthusiasm, James is transforming the audit approach from the traditional approach to one powered by analytics

“During my time at Baker Tilly I had a three-month secondment at BAA as reporting accountant. I qualified as a CA in 2009 before joining EY in November 2009 as audit senior in Glasgow. I progressed to assistant manager with EY in October 2011, promoted to manager in October 2012, and then promoted to current role of senior manager in October 2015. During this time, I’ve been exposed to a wide variety of interesting and challenging clients, travelled extensively within the UK, worked with colleagues across the Globe and trained our audit seniors from across EMEIA.

“My current role involves managing client portfolio, leading the regions implementation of analytical audit techniques and new platforms, leading the strive for audit quality and the audit team’s representative on the cross service private middle markets board.

“Initially, I stayed in audit after qualifying as a CA to buy more thinking time for my longer-term goals. Now I realise I’ve stayed within practice and audit because I find the variety of work, wide range of challenging technical matters and interaction with people highly rewarding. You get great access to business leaders in large corporates to entrepreneurs of SMEs. The visibility of the career path in a professional services firm particularly in audit is also very appealing.

“Undoubtedly the CA qualification has given me the foundation to build my career and provided me with a solid foundation to succeed as an auditor. It’s helped build up my commercial acumen which I’ve been able to apply in the day job as an auditor. The grounding I have as a CA certainly helps when it comes to embedding new techniques and approaches in audit.”