Rob Young (ACA MChem)

About Rob

Rob Young is a UK-based chartered accountant, auditor, and finance leader with over a decade of experience across public practice, corporate finance, and business leadership. He was a finalist in consideration for Accountancy Age's "35 Under 35" award in finance and accountancy. He is currently Managing Director of Love Your Accountants (LYA) and Director of Finance at Icebreaker One, and writes on accountancy, tax, audit, business finance, and sustainability-linked finance topics.

Current Roles

Rob has 2 main roles currently being the Managing Director of Love Your Accountants (LYA) and Icebreaker One (IB1).
 
Love Your Accountants: Rob leads LYA, a modern, cloud-accounting-led firm based in Epsom, Surrey, working alongside founder Andy Mildner. LYA works predominantly with start-ups, tech companies and local businesses, using cloud-based software to give clients clarity and confidence over their numbers. As the main point of contact for many of LYA's larger clients, Rob provides monthly advisory support from rebuilding clients' management accounts and KPI reporting to automating the finance function as a whole. He works across a wide variety of industries including Food and beverage companies, tech and e-commerce businesses, water companies, recruitment firms, legal practices and other advisory businesses such as wealth managers.
 
Icebreaker One: Led by CEO Gavin Starks, IB1 develops open data standards and frameworks that help organisations share and use data responsibly in support of net-zero goals. As a registered director Rob sits at board level contributing to business strategy and overseeing the organisation's financial systems. Rob also sits on the Delivery Oversight Committee (DOC) for the Perseus project, working alongside leaders and management from the IoD, UK Finance, ICAEW and major UK banks. He is part of the team who reporting to steering groups spanning government departments, the FSB, Open Banking, the British Business Bank, the Scaleup Institute, Innovate UK, the Cabinet Office and the British Chambers of Commerce.

Professional Background

Rob qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ACA) while working at Wellden Turnbull Chartered Accountants (Cobham), where he spent almost four years progressing from a Junior Accountant up to a Senior Accountant and Auditor. His work centred on compliance for clients including preparation of statutory accounts, VAT, bookkeeping, and audit alongside technical IFRS/UK GAAP support, resource planning, business development, and training and mentoring junior staff on behalf of the ICAEW.

He went on to spend nearly two years as a Senior Associate at PwC UK (mainly in the London and Crawley office) working solely on audit engagements for large and mid-sized clients including Schlumberger, BCA Group, mid-sized investment outfits, children's clothing manufacturers, construction companies, wine producers, and FCA-regulated businesses. His work there included PCAOB, SOX, FCA CASS-standard audits and standard UK based audits, managing teams of up to 12 people and jointly training PwC's graduate intake. He was recognised with a 10/10 client satisfaction score for service quality.
 
Before moving into finance leadership Rob was an Audit Manager at Menzies LLP where he was the main contact for some of the larger client audits including stationery and office distributors, office investment companies and tech companies. He also spent much of his time training junior-to-senior staff and reviewing their work ahead of partner sign-off. He worked closely with the internal technical team to develop audit methodology, consolidation approach and materiality guidance and led a full overhaul of the firm's resourcing system, replacing a fragile excel based system with a multi-user online platform that extended resource planning from 1–2 months ahead to a much longer horizon with tiered permissions across the business.

Speaking & Industry Involvement

Rob has presented educational finance sessions for third parties to their clients, schools and spoke on a worldwide ICAEW panelalongside the Finance Director of Boots and a leading EY partner based in Asia, discussing technological advances in accountancy and internal systems.

Education

Rob holds a Master's degree in Chemistry, starting at the University of York and completing his final masters year at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore (a top-50 ranked university globally). At York he was a mathematics and chemistry mentor, supported incoming international students, played football for his college and university and volunteered at a hospice alongside a full slate of sporting and society activities.
 
Prior to University Rob attended Sutton Grammar School for Boys for his GCSEs and A Levels where he was a school prefect, U18 London Schools chess champion and active across sport, music, and community fundraising. After university, he went on to train as a Chartered Accountant through BPP whilst working full time qualifying with the ICAEW and passing every exam first time.

Community & Governance

Alongside his professional work Rob has taken on a number of voluntary and governance roles:

• Vice Treasurer, The Hollies Investment Club: managing share/fund transactions, member tax returns, and HMRC correspondence on behalf of a private investment club.
• Legal Charity Secretary, Love Me Love My Mind: a mental health charity based in Epsom, Surrey, where he supported compliance, documentation and general charity operations.
• School Governor, St Martin's C of E Aided Schools: having an impartial viewpoint on school finances and operations is vital, so Rob joined the board of governors with no prior affiliation to the school, helping ensure it operated in the best way for its students.
• Ward Volunteer, St Leonard's Hospice: during the third year of his degree Rob cycled to the hospice one to two times a week to support nursing staff and patients at mealtimes, helping maintain a clean, positive environment for patients and families.

Outside Work

Away from the day job, Rob is a keen chess and DOTA player and football fan, does dog agility training with his Springador and is committed to the pursuit of the perfect lawn through gardening. He's also handy with DIY and building projects around the house.

Why This Matters

Rob's writing draws directly on hands-on experience: qualifying and working as a chartered accountant, auditing FCA-regulated and PCAOB/SOX-standard businesses at PwC, running an accountancy firm as Managing Director and sitting on the finance and strategy team of a sustainability-focused data organisation. His perspective spans small business accounting, statutory audit, corporate finance leadership, and governance - giving his commentary practical grounding rather than theoretical distance.