I have been reflecting on how different FY23 felt to FY22 - the socio-and-geopolitical unrest continued, but in FY23 we endured higher inflation, rising interest rates and sluggish GDP performance.
Our Group, comprising the UK, Channel Islands and the Middle East was impacted by this market volatility, more sharply in the UK and Channel Islands which was further subdued by localised political uncertainty, and a reduction in deals transaction volumes. The Middle East experienced more favourable trading conditions, on the back of a continued push to transform in the region and diversify local economies.
Within this context, we are pleased that our Group revenue grew 16% to £5.8bn. This result speaks to our continued relevance to clients and allows us to create more opportunities for our people - current and future - to develop and thrive.
Growth is also helping to fund our ambitious investment plans, which aim to continually evolve our service areas, add different capabilities in response to client needs and maintain the high quality of all of our service offerings. Our Managed Service offerings, opportunities presented by Generative AI and other emerging technologies, addressing ESG challenges, and developing our Next Generation Audit methodology and tools, are just a few areas of our investment focus.
We continued to invest in our people, to develop and enhance their technical, professional standards and conduct skills. Our communities and wider society benefit through our volunteering and various community programmes. And we are committed to being a responsible contributor to public funds and in the UK alone our FY23 total tax contribution increased from £1.5bn to £1.7bn.
We saw growth across all of our industry sectors.
In particular, our Financial Services expertise supported our group industry sector revenue growth to £2.0bn. Our deep sector expertise contributes to our relevance, and we were pleased to be awarded the NatWest audit and retain the HSBC appointment.
Whilst Financial Services remains one of the key industry sectors for our Group, the Government and Health industry sector saw strong growth to just over £1bn. This was led by work in the Middle East as public sector organisations continue to invest heavily in capital projects and infrastructure and deliver programmes to develop and broaden their industries beyond petro-carbons. Strong cross-industry private sector demand in the region also helped generate a buoyant consulting market.
In the UK, consulting demand centered around large, multi-year complex transformation programmes as clients sought to refresh their strategies, transform their operating models and leverage opportunities arising from new technologies.
Overall, we saw an impressive Consulting practice growth for the Group of 30%.
Our Audit practice grew by 19% as it supported clients to meet evolving and complex regulatory requirements. Clients benefited from access to our key skills via our multi-disciplinary approach, including areas such as tax, pensions and TCFD emissions disclosures.
Our Tax practice continues to be in high demand with our clients, and saw group revenues increase by 19%. Risk and Deals revenues both grew by 6%. The UK deal transaction volumes were down by 21% in the year, and this reflected similar trends in the wider global deals market, and was felt across our Deals practice and all parts of our business.
Like most large and complex businesses, we have operated over the last few years in an uncertain environment, and expect to continue to do so. However we take great confidence from the demand that our clients have for our expertise, insight and support - and we continue to invest to maintain the relevance, and therefore the value, of this to our client base.
I am excited for what FY24 will bring for our clients and our people plus the potential we have to continue to make an impact relevant to all of our stakeholders.
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