Meet Abi Briggs

Abi Briggs has many roles within Deloitte’s UK TMT practice, but when it comes to role models, she’s very clear: her parents, and her mother in particular. “My mum is a fiercely independent woman,” she says. “Her general outlook is that if she can do it, she’ll do it herself. She’ll tackle anything and definitely no gender specific jobs in my household growing up. So in terms of working hard and trying to do things myself, that kind of perspective has massively influenced me over the years.”

Among her many roles, Abi, who’s based in London, is an Indirect Tax Partner (VAT advisory), the UK TMT Tax and Legal Lead, the NSE Emerging Growth Companies co-lead and the UK LCSP on Tiktok. Given that she wears a variety of hats, what she does for clients depends on the role that’s most applicable to the client need. In her VAT advisor role she works with TMT clients that are launching a new product or service offering and need help understanding how to tax them. Or she’s helping them enter a new geography and determining the taxes they’ll need to pay in the country. Most recently, she observes, Africa has become a huge market for TMT, and companies are navigating significant cultural differences with the tax authorities. In comparison to established sectors like financial services, which are heavily regulated, parts of TMT are less regulated but are moving toward a more regulated environment. For that reason, says Abi, “we’re taking our learnings from the Financial Services sector and applying them in TMT.” With a client, the key is helping them understand the “evolving regulation that’s coming in their direction – it’s exciting to help a business that’s truly in the eye of the storm of all this external change.“ The key, she says, is supporting them with all the regulatory change and at the same time helping them amid the very challenging media coverage and the inevitable geopolitical change.

She particularly finds the global nature of the business fascinating. “How does our network of member firms and individual geographies, all working on the same account stay connected, and how do we best communicate our really strong ethos of wanting to help the client?” Abi originally came to Deloitte from Arthur Andersen and says she feels extremely lucky that she ended up with the right firm so soon after leaving university, one that has such a strong global network. “Yes, it can be challenging, but it’s really fun when you get the chance to work with really brilliant people across geographies,” she observes. “There’s something incredibly fun about that when it works well. We’re really powerful when we’re all pulling in the same direction for all the right reasons.”