Recent graduate Sebastian Woollard is proof you don’t have to be studying accounting to work at KPMG

When I graduated the University of Auckland with my BCom/BSc, I didn’t have a specific career or job in mind. I had an idea that I wanted to work at the interface of business and science, facilitating commercialisation of science innovations.

As opportunities presented itself, I found myself considering a role at KPMG’s Innovation and Growth Advisory team. The team presented exciting prospects to work with innovative companies in New Zealand especially contributing to growth through funding Research and Development (R&D) activities.

When I was first considering career options, a Big Four accounting firm was the last thing on my mind. Largely because I wanted to use both my science and business studies. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find everyone on my team has a similar background in science.

Our work primarily consists of understanding what R&D our client companies are doing. We assess the intensity of their R&D activities and figure out how best to assist them to use government incentives to boost their in-house R&D. There is a heavy emphasis to understand the technical nature of work being done by our clients, rather than simply looking at financial statements.

While at University I studied Genetics, Cellular biology, Commercial law and Management, none of which involved much accounting. I quickly realised that working in advisory services requires an analytical mind set and problem solving skills in order to solve the challenges facing our clients. My studies have sufficiently equipped me for this. Within the Innovation and Growth Advisory team, being scientifically literate is also essential as we must familiarise ourselves with whichever field a given client is working in to understand what they are doing and why.

With the introduction of the new R&D tax credit regime in the pipeline, this is a specialised growing area within KPMG. Both the volume and scope of services provided are increasing. The stated goal from the Government is to increase spending on R&D to 2% of GDP by 2027. Financial and professional service firms are doing their part to facilitate this goal of enriching NZ’s innovation landscape.

Sebastian Woollard
Consultant, KPMG