SURVEYS & RESEARCH

Wealth Management: Can You Afford Not to Provide It?

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portrait of Seth Fineberg
Fineberg
 Seth Fineberg is an accounting industry consultant, content strategist, analyst and speaker. His current business is Accountants Forward. He has been a business editor and journalist for over 30 years, the vast majority of which has been spent overseeing the accounting profession’s evolution.

Advisory begins with conversations.

By Seth Fineberg
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management.

Today we are cresting the biggest waves of change that I’ve seen in my 20-plus years of covering the accounting profession. I’m talking about the need for CPAs to go beyond simply being the trusted tax guy (or girl) for their clients and to help them manage all aspects of their wealth. This movement has been building for the better part of a decade, but only recently has it gone from “I’ll think about it” to “Can I afford not to get on board?”

Not to sound the alarm bells here, but CPAs must soon choose between riding the financial planning wave or being swept under it.
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Clients Demand Niche Know-How, and They’re Willing to Pay for It

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Expertise is the new table stakes.
Brands matter: Clients rely on business or personal referrals to find their accountants.

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines Research

U.S. business clients are willing to pay up to 25 percent more for specialized accounting services — and many are making niche expertise a non-negotiable.

MORE in Client Service Opportunities and in Advisory and Consulting, and

A TaxDome-commissioned survey of 353 small- and mid-sized business executives and owners across industries finds that as companies grow, they leave generalists behind in favor of firms that understand their vertical, speak their language and solve the high-stakes problems that come with scale.

Once they go niche, they rarely return.

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CPA Pricing Power Falters as Salaries March Upward

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The tax and accounting sector shows signs of accelerating change.

By CPA Trendlines

Salaries at CPA firms are entering their second year of marked year-over-year gains, even as billing rate increases remain few and far between, according to a new analysis by CPA Trendlines.

MORE: Most Tax and Accounting Firms Are Relying on Pay Raises in a Losing Battle for Talent | Higher Wages, Fewer Jobs: A New Era for CPA Staffing | Struggling to Keep Up with Market Salaries? |

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An industry that once seemed stable and predictable is now anything but. Some can call it a transformation. For others, it’s a massive dislocation.

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Overcome Health, Wealth and Stealth Challenges

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Why we need them.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

Now we move on to our sixth “C” in the passport to partnership – challenges.

Again the heading has more than a single application, which we’ll explore here.

MORE by Martin Bissett
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Ultimately, the partners interviewed in our research broke “challenges” down into two key areas:

  1. The ability for a manager to pull the firm out of the mire when there’s a problem
  2. The ability for a manager to pull the client out of the mire when there’s a problem

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