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Book explains how CPAs can break into wealth management

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A financial planner working at the intersection of wealth management and tax wrote and compiled a guide on how accountants can leap into the related but often separate field.

Holistic Guide to Wealth Management” by Rory Henry, a director of Marina Del Rey, California-based Arrowroot Family Office, and nearly three dozen other contributors offers a blueprint into how certified public accountants should understand comprehensive planning and begin integrating it into their practices. The book is available for pre-order through the publishing arm of tax and finance news outlet CPA Trendlines.

“Historically, the professions worked in silos, and I don’t think the technology was there just yet. But, as we’re seeing the advancements in technology, I think we’re seeing a greater integration of the professions,” Henry, who’s also a podcast host and a contributing writer to Financial Planning and FP sister publication Accounting Today, said in an interview. “[Clients] absolutely love it. Historically, the professions stayed in their lanes.”

READ MORE: Taxes + wealth: 2 connected but still (for now) distinct fields are merging

He cited examples of how that’s beginning to change, such as the rollout this year of a new certification in tax planning from The American College of Financial Services. Other developments in that regard include the addition of planning topics to the CPA exam and technology that adapts artificial intelligence into advisors’ procedures or finds tax savings opportunities through, for example, ongoing loss-harvesting identification throughout the year rather than with a cumbersome manual process in the fourth quarter.

 “Holistic Guide to Wealth Management” is available for pre-order from CPA Trendlines.
“Holistic Guide to Wealth Management” is available for pre-order from CPA Trendlines.

Rory Henry

“For CPAs, offering holistic wealth management services can be a game changer for your practice,” Kelly Waltrich, co-founder of financial services and technology marketing consultancy Intention.ly, writes in a section of the book devoted to the communications aspect of branching into wealth management. “These services are a clear opportunity to provide top-notch guidance to clients while fueling additional revenue streams. But let’s be real — simply hanging out a ‘wealth management’ shingle won’t cut it in an industry in which competition is abundant, and differentiation is key. Making your clients and prospects aware of your expanded offerings and growing your business as a result of those offerings requires a much more targeted approach.”

Other sections consist of those outlining the services in a full wealth management menu, the practice management lessons for CPAs trying to figure out what their advisory practices will need to make the transition, an appendix that delves into mental and physical health and business transformation and an opening group of essays introducing Henry’s approach. 

Henry drew collaborators among some other names familiar to many financial advisors and tax professionals like planning entrepreneur, writer and podcaster Michael Kitces, Nitrogen (formerly Riskalyze) founder Aaron Klein and commission-free annuities firm CEO David Lau of DPL Financial Partners. 

In his introductory essay, Henry shares the common refrains that CPAs often say when asked why they don’t provide wealth management — which are similar to those of advisors who may hesitate to discuss topics related to taxes

  • “I don’t have the time to get the appropriate licenses and certifications.”
  • “I don’t know how to service the clients.”
  • “I’m afraid that a bad investment outcome during a bear market could cost me a lifetime tax client.”
  • “I don’t understand the investment and wealth protection side well enough.”
  • “I don’t want to sell my clients investment products.”
  • “I don’t know how to price the services when it’s not a deliverable like a tax return.”
  • “I’m not able to set up and manage the back end sufficiently.”
  • “It’s not a right fit for our firm.”

“As a CPA, you are the trusted guide in your client’s financial life,” Henry writes. “I’ve always believed in putting the spotlight on other people, i.e., your clients, rather than yourself. You should take pride in helping them become successful. It goes back to my notion of ROR (‘return on relationship‘). By guiding your client through the unpredictable and often difficult business and financial terrain of modern life, you’re making your client the hero, rather than yourself.”

READ MORE: Financial planner’s new book ties family meetings to long-term wealth

As an illustration of how opening the new line of business may require a different way of thinking about money and careers, Henry’s introduction discusses how being in an improv class has been integral to his professional development and what he gleaned from talented siblings as a middle child with a father in the banking business and a mother who was a school principal.

Rory Henry is a director of Marina Del Rey, California-based Arrowroot Family Office
Rory Henry is a director of Marina Del Rey, California-based Arrowroot Family Office.

Rory Henry

“Mom was always reading books when I grew up, and she encouraged my siblings and I to do the same,” Henry writes. “She once appeared on the TV game show, ‘The $25,000 Pyramid,’ and walked away with $25,000 in prize money after sailing through the rounds without missing a question. In fact, she only got one question wrong on her SATs. I also have no doubt that my mom is the source of my creative thinking and my thirst for lifelong learning. That curiosity, combined with being a voracious reader, allowed me to obtain both the CFP (certified financial planner) and BFA (behavioral financial advisor) accreditation in less than six months.”

The personal side of money and finance leads directly to adapting holistic planning into previously tax or investment-management dominant businesses, Henry said.

“The glue that puts everything together is really the human-first approach, so I wanted people to learn more about Rory the human,” he said. “I believe so much in relationships because I believe that’s going to carry us on into the future.”

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IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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