With Deloitte re-establishing a Jamaican practice in 2025, all four network firms are competing locally again. The counter-intuitive effect is not that local specialists lose work — it is that buyers are getting better at separating two different purchases.
Assurance is a credibility purchase. When a regulator, an audit committee or an overseas parent has to accept the result, a network name and a defensible methodology are worth paying for.
Delivery is a labour purchase. Writing policies, building an ISMS, running staff training, sitting with a finance team through a filing backlog — that work rewards proximity and hourly rate, not brand.
Auditor independence forces part of this split anyway: the firm that signs your accounts generally cannot build the controls it later tests. The practical pattern in Jamaica is a Big Four or mid-tier network firm on assurance, and a local compliance specialist on delivery, with one written scope so nothing falls between them.