Mazuma accountancy boss Lucy Cohen on her journey from apprentice

Ms Cohen believes that encouraging social mobility and diversity benefits individual businesses and the wider profession.

“Those diverse voices, those experiences from different cultural and economic backgrounds make for a really rich profession,” she said.

She thinks it might just change the image of the profession too.

“Let’s be honest, nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks accounting is a sexy career,” she said.

“But that’s changing because numbers, money, finance underpin everything in our society and when you access that and understand it, your ability to navigate the world is enhanced so much.”

The Welsh government provides funding for apprenticeship places, external in Wales, but has admitted it will not meet its manifesto commitment to create 125,000 apprentices by 2026 because of funding cuts.