Having just come off a year of unprecedented growth, it's hardly surprising that some of the fastest-growing accounting firms in the country are feeling optimistic about the future, but it isn't just their own growth that's encouraging them — they're finding lots of opportunities to be excited about.
"I think the profession is going to grow like crazy. People are not going into the field, but it's a field that's actually growing; people need this," Lance Brant, managing partner of Capstone CPAs in Bend, Oregon, told Accounting Today at an awards ceremony honoring the
"I think this profession is going to be one of the most popular fields down the road," he continued. "I compare it to being a dentist or a physician; accounting is probably one of the best places you can go to help people."
Beyond the broad opportunities for the profession as a whole, Brant also sees specific ones for his firm.
"The growth in our area is probably going to be 'coordinated financial care,' where we are going to help them in their accounting but also do financial planning for them, but then also do estate planning for them. We have actually bought a law firm," he explained. "Coordinated financial care is helping people not only with taxes but with estate planning, financial planning, setting goals and all that. Eighty percent of people don't have their wills and trusts done."
To help pursue the opportunity, Capstone actually trademarked the phrase "coordinated financial care," and has formed a virtual law firm so it can help clients with the legal aspects of estate planning.
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Pleasanton, California-based Sensiba also sees a strong future in specific offerings: "We're seeing a tremendous opportunity to grow in specific areas and service lines, with ESG being one of them," said partner-in-charge of tax Monic Ramirez. "ESG and sustainability services — that's an area where we're seeing a lot of clients fall behind."
Michael Maksymiw, executive director of the Aprio Firm Alliance of Atlanta-based Aprio, agreed on the potential of ESG: "There are so many opportunities with new things coming in," he said. "ESG could be an enormous thing that we could grab hold of, just like we did with tax 100 years ago."
Meanwhile Eric Casazza, a partner and leader of the digital services practice at New York City-based Citrin Cooperman, sees opportunity in providing more high-value advisory services to clients.
"I think clients in general are looking more to full-service providers and kind of a one-stop shop in terms of being able to see their business as a whole," he said. "And so in addition to our audit and tax, I see this expanding quite a bit on the advisory side. I mean, digital transformation is huge at our clients right now, whether that's ERP implementations, AI implementations [and so on]."
Finally, Jay Weinstein, vice chairman for growth at New York City-based EisnerAmper, cited an area that's intriguing a lot of firms: artificial intelligence.
"Somebody's got to talk about AI," he said. "Figuring out where we fit in, both internally and externally — how are we going to use AI to make a bigger contribution to our clients, and how are we going to be more efficient? Our clients are starting to ask us, 'Can you help us with our AI program?'"
"We're bullish on the future," he added.
