Our Technical Director, Matt Taylor, summarises the 2026 Accountex exhibition and latest Pro Drive IT news from it.

In May Pro Drive returned to Accountex 2026 (ACX26 for short) for our 3rd year exhibiting there. This year the organisers Diversified Communications added an entire new section called the FD Show, with a greater focus on accountants and those working in business rather than practice which was great news for us as we also provide strategic IT support and cyber security services to the wider financial and professional services sectors.

Accountex remains the largest finance and accounting expo in the world and this year was the biggest and best yet with over 13,000 unique visitors across 2 days, hosted in the Excel centre in the heart of London’s Docklands. More stages, more speakers, more sessions and yes, more blimps, dinosaurs and robots that I was expecting.

For Pro Drive it was our busiest Accountex yet with over 30 accountancy firms completing our annual accountancy IT

benchmarking survey. As expected the majority of people visiting our stand wanted to have a discussion around AI and how it can drive efficiency and profitability in practices so we had plenty of discussions on how we can support businesses with everything from AI coaching sessions through to full discovery workshops and our managed AI agent building service.

We also launched our new cyber security rapid audit for accountants to help firms diagnose where their risk lies.

Bruce Penson, Debbie Alexander and Chris Ross-Lewin were all there bright and early for the opening day with our popular water bottles to give away along with a few other goodies to give out to people that visited us. I joine

d a little later due a pre-existing event commitment, but managed to get there just in time to help with the day one rush.

Wednesday night at ACX is a chance for the vendors to wind down and relax after a hard day on the stands. Bruce and I made sure to say hello to our friends at The Fox pub just outside the Excel centre.

Day 2 on Thursday is generally a quieter day at ACX but still with thousands of visitors through the door. For me ACX is a perfect chance to catch up with my contacts in the accountancy space and to hopefully make new ones, so a slightly quieter day is a good opportunity to visit some of the other stands and really cement those connections.

As usual we ran a prize draw for all those that took our unique benchmarking survey. This year the prize was a Plaud Note Pro AI meeting notetaker (which I use myself and find invaluable) – congrats to Joseph Cox of Ecommerce Accountants as this years lucky winner!

Watch out for a follow up blog post with the latest results from our benchmarking survey, and take the opportunity to benchmark your business by clicking on the “Benchmark survey link on our home page here: IT Support | UK IT Company | Pro Drive IT.