Accountants need to lead the conversation on working more closely with financial planners and expanding their wealth accounting skill set to work on a whole-of-wealth basis, according to Class.
Class chief executive Kevin Bungard told the Class Connect 2018 conference in Sydney today that some accounting firms are growing the accountants’ footprint to ensure those who provide SMSF advice within the SMSF department of the firm can transfer their skills to broader disciplines and provide services in other parts of the business, such as family trusts.
“For me wealth accounting is where those multidiscipline firms have the accountants working in a whole-of-wealth basis closely with the financial planners,” Bungard said.
“Common themes they share is something around efficiency, setting up data feeds, process, supporting clients with self-servicing, staying on top of the processing that you’re doing, restructuring the organisation so you can support and use the technology effectively. If everyone’s a generalist, then you’re not going to get basically the benefits.”
Practices that, for example, provide extensive investment management services for high net worth clients may take those skills, work with the rest of the firm, reach out to financial planners in the practice, and work collaboratively with them to expand the capabilities of the team, he said.
“Make sure you’re actually understanding what your financial planners need from you and the accounting needs sort of catch up so that the financial planners will be looking at the information you provide,” he said.
“One of the things we consistently see with all of these firms is they are leading the charge in terms of doing daily processes and staying on top of everything. The planner needs to see what’s going on with the super funds and other portfolios that are under their care.”
He also urged accountants to take advantage of the integration Class has with Xplan and other financial planning tools in the future to achieve efficiency in their firms, and added successful firms are restructuring to support technology use efficiently.
