1Big accounting and consulting firms bill junior staff’s hours at several times what those juniors cost.
2AI now does much of that junior work, so the question is who keeps the saving.
3An AI played five roles in turn. A human referee wrote one story of 2026 to 2030.
4In the story the firms keep the saving at first, by hiring fewer graduates and holding prices.
5Then the firms’ own insurer and their clients’ staff take the saving back before any government acts.
6Blame decides it: every job that matters needs one named person who answers when it is wrong.
How it was made
No dice and no repeated games. One story, judged by a person.
The storySeventeen dated steps from 2026 to 2030. This page shows five of them.
The real recordStops on 1 July 2026. Every date after that is the story, not a prediction.
The figuresTeal is a checked real-world fact. Amber is a number we chose.
The players
The FirmA made-up mix of a big accounting firm and a top strategy firm. It bills by the hour.
The ChallengerTwo to six senior people, no juniors. One fixed product at a fixed price.
The BuyerA chief strategy officer. She decides what work her company buys in and what it does itself.
The AnalystsThe junior staff inside the Firm who do the research and build the slides.
The UnderwriterThe insurer who covers the Firm when its advice is wrong.
What happened
Story · 2026The Buyer has two of her own people rebuild a report with off-the-shelf AI. Now she knows the real cost.
Story · Late 2026 to 2027The Firm’s insurer moves first. Unsigned AI work costs more at renewal, or gets no cover.
Story · 2027Bad AI work lands on one licensed person, not the Firm. That person loses the licence and the career.
Story · 2027The Buyer gives two tiers of supplier the same job each quarter, then compares what comes back.
Story · 2029 to 2030The written rules arrive and copy what the insurer priced in 2027.
No date here is a real event. The real record is in normal mode.
The numbers
Graduate hiring, real firmsFig. 1
The real cuts to graduate hiring are uneven. KPMG cut a third, PwC under a tenth.
Cut to UK graduate intake, 2023 to 2024. Real figures. Our made-up Firm copies the steepest cutters.
Hiding AI use, real surveysFig. 2
About half of the workers surveyed hide how much they use AI at work.
Two large 2024 surveys: 31,000 knowledge workers in 31 countries, then 17,372 desk workers in 15 countries. Real figures.
Insurance prices, story against recordFig. 3
Our story needs insurers to charge more for unsigned AI work. Real insurers still give discounts.
Amber is the 27 per cent rise we wrote in, on the insurance against being sued for bad advice. Teal is the real 2025 market: discounts of 5 to 15 per cent. In May 2026 three insurers asked their regulators to exclude AI losses. The weakest link in our story.
What it means
In our story the insurer wrote the first rule on AI work. It charged more for work no named person had signed, so the Firm’s finance chief became the brake. Real insurers are still cutting prices, so this is a direction and not today’s bill.
A trusted name protects whether clients hire you. It does not protect what the work costs once the client knows the price of the routine part.
If you run a firm like this, read your next insurance renewal before any new rule arrives.
The line
The firms kept their clients and lost their price. The first rule on AI work was an insurance bill, not a law.
