Since joining the UHY Hacker Young network, we’ve had a number of conversations with clients curious about what that membership involves day to day, and what it opens up for them. Now more than six months into our membership, it’s an ideal time to share what it’s meant for our clients since we joined.

What the UHY Hacker Young network actually is

UHY Hacker Young is a group of independent, separately owned accountancy and advisory firms across the UK, each of which remains financially and operationally autonomous. Williamson & Croft is still Williamson & Croft: same team, same clients, same way of working. Membership means we now sit inside a wider collective of firms who collaborate, share expertise, and refer work to one another under a common national and international banner.

That UK network is itself part of something larger: UHY International, a global association of independent firms spanning 340 offices across 95 countries, with more than 10,000 professionals worldwide. It’s a structure built on the idea that firms can retain their independence and local relationships while still being able to call on specialist expertise anywhere in the world when a client needs it.

For clients, nothing changes about who they’re working with – what changes is what we can bring in when their needs go beyond us.

Real client scenarios, not just theory

Since joining, we’ve already seen what that extended reach means in practice.

One client, an office fit-out business, was expanding into Europe and building a relationship with a German entity to sell over £1m of goods each year. They wanted to understand the best way to structure VAT registration for those sales, given the scale of the business now being done in Germany. We connected them with UHY Amsterdam, who advised setting up a foreign VAT registration rather than establishing a legal entity, then applying for postponed VAT accounting and shipping the goods from the Netherlands to Germany.

In another case, a business sale involved entities in both England and Spain. We drew on expertise from UHY Madrid and UHY Malaysia for transfer pricing support, preparing local transfer pricing documentation and reviewing intercompany pricing and methodology against local requirements, ensuring the transaction remained compliant across multiple tax jurisdictions.

These aren’t hypothetical benefits. They’re examples of clients getting access to niche, jurisdiction-specific expertise that would otherwise have meant bringing in an unfamiliar third party – instead, it came through a firm we already know and trust within our own network.

Knowledge sharing across the network

Membership isn’t only about cross-border client work. It’s also changed how our team learns and develops. Earlier this month, colleagues from across the firm attended UHY’s 2026 National Conference, themed “The Future is Here: Building What Comes Next” – bringing together partners and teams from UHY firms across the UK to share ideas on everything from technology to talent to client service.

AI was a strong theme throughout, and it’s an area we’re already leaning into ourselves as we build towards being an AI-first accountancy firm. The exposure to how other independent firms are tackling the same challenges we face – and the direct exchange of ideas with people doing the same job elsewhere – is difficult to replicate outside a network like this.

A broader base to build from

Being part of a wider network has also opened doors that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. We’ve built new relationships with other UHY firms and their contacts that simply weren’t on our radar before, and a handful of conversations that started as an introduction through the network have since turned into new business for the firm.

What it means for our clients going forward

None of this changes who we are or how we work with our clients day-to-day. What it does mean is that when a client’s needs stretch beyond our own specialisms, or beyond the UK, we now have a trusted first port of call rather than a cold search for the right adviser.

Damien Loughran, Managing Partner at Williamson & Croft, says:

“Joining UHY Hacker Young has already proved its worth many times over. It’s given us the confidence to say yes to clients whose needs go beyond our own four walls, knowing we’ve got a trusted firm on the other end of the phone who can help. Just as importantly, it’s connected our team to a wider community of people who are facing the same challenges and opportunities we are, and that exchange of ideas is invaluable.

“We’re only a matter of months in, and it’s already clear this is going to keep paying off for our clients for years to come.”