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Finance in Florida
Florida-based banks are ripe for mergers
The number of Florida-based banks is down by 60% since 2007.
Making Adjustments
Technology is driving change in the accounting profession.
W.G. Spoor is a partner at St. Petersburg’s Spoor Bunch Franz, a 63-employee accounting firm that merged with Spence Marston Bunch & Morris in 2016 and acquired Strawn Marshall Cunningham Condon & Sweat earlier this year. Spoor spoke with FLORIDA TREND about issues facing the accounting profession.
Tech effect
“I think the biggest issue that’s affecting us and probably everybody else is technology — the rate of change. Technology is already impacting our profession. I’m talking about artificial intelligence. It’s impacting auditing, accounting, tax returns, everything You’ve got H&R Block using Watson, (an IBM computing system). You’ve got some of the big four accounting firms using artificial intelligence to do audits. What used to take people weeks, they can do in hours. To not be ready for it, to not understand the rate of change that’s happening right now, that would be doing a disservice to ourselves and our clients.
“There are things like optical character recognition readers where items get scanned and sorted automatically. Before, if you had a stack of papers, you used to have to sort it yourself. I think we’re heading toward a Siri-like world” in which clients might be able to interact with a computer to answer accounting questions and gain access to their accounting data.
Staying relevant
“As long as we provide client service and give advice to people, they’re still going to need that. How we do it, how we deliver it, all of that will change. But I think we’ll always have a place, especially when it comes to interpreting data and making decisions. I don’t think people will rely on computers as much for that, but they will rely on computers to gather the information, but we’ll be there to interpret what it all means.”
Knowledge transfer
“If you look around, most people sitting in my chair are Baby Boomers. There’s a lot of CPAs that, especially sole practitioners at smaller firms, are in their late 60s, 70s, and they’re going to be getting out of the business. That’s going to impact things not only from a turnover as far as ownership of those firms and clients moving, but also knowledge. I mean, you’ve got a ton of people who have been in the profession for 40-plus years who have a lot of knowledge that’s going out. We’ve probably got at least 10 or 12 people who fit that description here who we’ve bought out previously, but they’re still here. They still come in. Some of them just work three months a year. But what we do is we want to transition their knowledge base to our younger staff. These people have 40 years of experience, and they understand what to do and how to do it. Transitioning that knowledge base is very important.”
— Art Levy
