AI AUTOMATION FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS

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THE STATE OF FINANCIAL SERVICES OPERATIONS

Compliance reviews that take 3 rounds. Client onboarding spread across 6 systems. Portfolio reports touched by 4 people before they ship. Your people are not slow — your systems force them to be.

72%of financial services firm leaders cite "operational inefficiency" as a top-3 barrier to growth — but only 14% have a technology strategy beyond buying what vendors sell them.

ENGAGEMENT LETTER

CLIENT:[Your Firm Name]

ENGAGEMENT:Operational Efficiency Assessment

PERIOD:Current State Analysis

SCOPE OF SERVICES:

1.Map every workflow your people actually follow (not the one in your procedures manual)

2.Identify the 20% of automation that eliminates 80% of the manual pain

3.Build systems around YOUR process — not force you onto someone else's platform

ESTIMATED RECOVERY:

│12-18 hrs/week per senior

│2.3x faster review cycles

│94% reduction in rework

STATUS:READY TO ENGAGE

The Assessment

IN THE MATTER OF:

The Modern Financial Services Firm

STATEMENT OF MATERIAL FACTS

Filed pursuant to the interests of operational excellence

The forces reshaping financial services are not new — but their convergence is unprecedented. Regulatory complexity, fee compression, talent shortages, and technology sprawl are hitting simultaneously across every vertical. The firms that adapt their operations will define the next decade of the profession.

¶1.73%

of accounting firms report difficulty retaining staff

The talent crisis is not a recruiting problem — it is a work-quality problem. Associates do not leave for 10% more salary. They leave because they spent 80-hour weeks copy-pasting between systems.

(AICPA 2024 Trends Report, 2024)

¶2.$260B+

US financial advisory and accounting services market

Growing across verticals, but margins are compressing everywhere. The firms that win will deliver more insight with fewer manual hours — not hire more bodies into broken workflows.

(IBISWorld / Cerulli Associates, 2024)

¶3.47%

of firm time spent on compliance and regulatory work

Nearly half of every professional's year goes to work that follows rigid, repeatable rules — the exact type of work that intelligent automation was built for.

(Thomson Reuters / Kitces Research, 2024)

¶4.2.8x

review cycles on average engagement or filing

Most engagements go through nearly 3 full review cycles before sign-off. Not because the work is wrong — because the review process is manual, fragmented, and depends on tribal knowledge.

(AICPA Practice Management Survey, 2024)

¶5.34%

of RIAs cite compliance burden as their top operational cost

Compliance is non-negotiable. But the manual overhead surrounding it — document assembly, audit trail reconstruction, regulatory filings — is entirely automatable.

(IAA / Schwab RIA Benchmarking Study, 2024)

¶6.22 min

average time to locate a single client document

When your team spends more time finding documents than analyzing them, you do not have a people problem — you have an infrastructure problem.

(AICPA / Financial Planning Association, 2024)

The Technology Paradox

Financial services firms spend $15-30K per professional on technology annually — and most of it creates MORE work, not less. Your team runs one system for compliance, another for CRM, a separate portal for client reporting, Excel for everything in between, and email to hold it all together. Every "solution" added another tab to manage.

$15-30Kper professional annually on technology

Most of it creates more work, not less

(Kitces Research / AICPA Practice Management, 2024)

The Fee Compression Squeeze

Clients across every vertical are demanding more for less. AUM-based fees are declining. Hourly billing faces constant pushback. Fixed-fee engagements leave no room for inefficiency. Firms that cannot deliver high-touch service at lower operational cost will lose to firms that can.

15-20%fee compression across financial services since 2018

Margins shrink while compliance costs grow

(Cerulli Associates / AICPA Benchmarking, 2024)

The Regulatory Acceleration

SEC enforcement actions up 30% in three years. DOL fiduciary rule expanding. State insurance regulators increasing audit frequency. PCAOB inspection standards tightening. Compliance is not getting simpler — and the firms that automate their compliance infrastructure will spend their time on client work instead of documentation.

30%increase in SEC enforcement actions since 2021

Regulatory burden accelerating across every vertical

(SEC Enforcement Division Annual Report, 2024)

NOTE 2 — MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION

A Week in the Life of Your Firm

The inefficiencies nobody talks about in the partner meeting. These are not edge cases — they are Monday morning across financial services.

MONDAY 7:15 AM — THE AUDIT SENIOR

What does the first hour of fieldwork look like?

Sarah opens her laptop to start fieldwork on the Henderson Manufacturing audit. She needs last year's workpapers as a starting point. They are in Caseware — but the client changed their chart of accounts mid-year, half the PBC documents are in the portal and half came via email, and the planning memo references a risk assessment that is in a Word doc on the shared drive. She spends 45 minutes assembling what she needs before she can start actual audit work.

“I went to school for this? I am a $75/hour document archaeologist.”

THE HIDDEN COST:

45 minutes x 5 audit seniors x ~200 engagements/year = 750 hours of senior time spent on file assembly annually. At $150 blended rate, that is $112,500/year in non-billable preparation time — for ONE firm.

MONDAY 2:00 PM — THE WEALTH MANAGER

What does quarterly review prep actually look like?

Jason manages 142 client households. Quarterly reviews start next week. He needs to pull performance data from the custodian, reconcile it against the financial planning software, generate a summary for each client, flag accounts that drifted outside their target allocation, and prepare talking points for each meeting. The performance data exports from Schwab do not match the format his planning software expects. He has been copy-pasting and reformatting since 8 AM.

“I became a CFP to give financial advice, not to be a human ETL pipeline between Schwab and MoneyGuidePro.”

THE HIDDEN COST:

142 households x 25 minutes of manual data reconciliation per client per quarter = 59 hours of advisor time per quarter. At $300/hour, that is $71,000/year an advisor spends reformatting data instead of advising clients.

TUESDAY 9:00 AM — THE RIA COMPLIANCE OFFICER

How does your firm prepare for SEC examination?

Maria is the CCO for a $2B RIA. The SEC just sent a deficiency letter requesting documentation of the firm's best execution review process for the past 18 months. The data lives in three places: the trade management system has execution data, the compliance platform has the review notes, and the supporting rationale for trade-away decisions lives in emails between advisors and the trading desk. Maria will spend the next two weeks reconstructing an audit trail that should have been automatic.

“We did the reviews. We followed the process. But proving it after the fact takes longer than doing it in the first place.”

THE HIDDEN COST:

RIAs spend an average of 1,200 hours/year on compliance documentation and regulatory preparation. At a $3B AUM firm, the compliance team's time cost exceeds $300K annually — most of it on documentation assembly, not actual compliance analysis.

WEDNESDAY 11:00 AM — THE INSURANCE BROKER

What happens when a client changes their benefits package?

Tom is an employee benefits broker managing 85 employer groups. His largest client — 600 employees — wants to restructure their health plan mid-year. He needs to model three scenarios across four carriers, generate comparison spreadsheets, verify compliance with ACA employer mandate requirements, check state continuation laws, and prepare a presentation for the client's CFO. The carrier quoting portals each have different formats, none of them export cleanly, and the ACA compliance calculations are in a separate spreadsheet he built three years ago that nobody else understands.

“I have four carrier portals open, three Excel files, and the ACA calculator I pray still works. If I get hit by a bus, this client is in trouble.”

THE HIDDEN COST:

Benefits brokers spend 8-14 hours per mid-year plan change per employer group on modeling and compliance verification. At 85 groups with an average of 2 changes per year, that is 1,360 hours annually of manual spreadsheet work — time that could be spent on client advisory and new business development.

THURSDAY 3:00 PM — THE ACTUARIAL ANALYST

How do you handle pension valuation updates?

Rachel is updating the annual pension valuation for a 2,000-participant defined benefit plan. The census data from HR arrived in a different format than last year — new columns, missing fields, and employee IDs that do not match the prior year file. She spends 4 hours cleaning and mapping the data before she can run it through the valuation model. The mortality tables were updated by the IRS in December, requiring her to manually update assumption sets across 14 plan files.

“The actual actuarial analysis takes 6 hours. The data wrangling takes 20. And if the census data has errors I do not catch, the entire valuation is wrong.”

THE HIDDEN COST:

Actuarial firms spend 60-70% of engagement time on data preparation, census reconciliation, and assumption management. For a mid-size actuarial practice, that translates to thousands of hours annually of credential-level professionals doing data-cleaning work.

FRIDAY 4:30 PM — THE MANAGING PARTNER

How well do you know your pipeline?

Robert sits down to review the pipeline for next quarter. He opens the CRM (that nobody uses consistently), checks the outlook calendars of 4 partners (because proposals live in email), and asks the admin to pull the "prospects" list (which is an Excel file from 2022 with half the entries closed or dead). He has no idea which proposals are pending, which clients are at risk, or which partners are at capacity.

“I am supposed to be running a $30M firm and I have less visibility into my pipeline than a used car dealership.”

THE HIDDEN COST:

Firms without pipeline visibility under-staff for engagements they win and over-invest in prospects that were dead 6 months ago. The average mid-market firm loses 8-12% of potential revenue annually to missed follow-ups, untracked proposals, and capacity mismatches.

NOTE 3 — INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT

Material Findings

The operational deficiencies eroding your margin, retention, and growth — across every financial services vertical. Each finding quantified. Each one fixable.

FINDING I: COMPLIANCE DOCUMENTATION & AUDIT READINESS

MATERIAL WEAKNESS

THE FINDING:

Across financial services, compliance documentation consumes disproportionate professional time. CPAs assemble workpapers across multiple systems. RIA compliance officers reconstruct audit trails from fragmented data. Insurance brokers manually verify ACA and state regulatory requirements. Actuaries reconcile census data against assumption sets. The compliance work itself is non-negotiable — but the manual documentation overhead surrounding it is entirely automatable.

EVIDENCE:

35-45%of professional time spent on compliance-related documentation

$120K-$300K/year in non-billable compliance overhead (50-person firm)

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“We pass every audit. The problem is that preparing for the audit costs more than running the practice. Half my team's year is spent proving we did what we already did.”
— Managing Partner, regional CPA firm

FINDING II: REVIEW NOTE & QC CYCLES

SIGNIFICANT DEFICIENCY

THE FINDING:

The same review notes get written year after year, engagement after engagement — across tax returns, audit workpapers, financial plans, and insurance proposals. Partners and managers spend hours writing feedback that is identical to last year's feedback. Staff make the same corrections. The institutional knowledge exists — it is just trapped in individual reviewers' heads and scattered Word documents.

EVIDENCE:

2.8xaverage review cycles per engagement (should be 1.5)

15-20 hrs of senior/partner time per engagement

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“I have written "verify the state allocation on multi-state returns" approximately 2,000 times in my career. The system should know this by now.”
— Tax Manager, Top 100 firm

FINDING III: CLIENT ONBOARDING & ACCOUNT SETUP

MATERIAL WEAKNESS

THE FINDING:

New client onboarding touches 4-8 systems across financial services: CRM, compliance platform, portfolio management, custodian, financial planning software, document management, billing, and client portal. Each requires separate data entry. Wealth managers re-enter the same client data across Schwab, their planning software, and their CRM. CPA firms manually set up clients across practice management, tax, and audit platforms. The first impression is delay and disorganization.

EVIDENCE:

4-8systems requiring separate data entry per new client

$800-$2,500 in soft costs per new client relationship

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“A new client signed our advisory agreement on Monday. They could not access their portal until Thursday. By Wednesday they were asking if they had made a mistake choosing us.”
— Operations Director, wealth management firm

FINDING IV: CLIENT REPORTING & PERFORMANCE PRESENTATION

SIGNIFICANT DEFICIENCY

THE FINDING:

Client-facing reports require pulling data from multiple sources, reformatting it to match firm templates, and manually reviewing for accuracy. Wealth managers build quarterly performance reports from custodian data that never exports cleanly. CPA firms assemble advisory dashboards from QuickBooks data and Excel. Insurance brokers create renewal analyses from carrier data in incompatible formats. The analysis takes 2 hours. The data assembly takes 10.

EVIDENCE:

10+ hrsper client per reporting cycle on data assembly and formatting

$150K-$400K/year in reporting overhead (mid-size firm)

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“I bill $350/hour for investment insights, not for reformatting Schwab exports into PowerPoint. But here I am, every quarter.”
— Senior Advisor, independent RIA

FINDING V: REGULATORY CHANGE MANAGEMENT

SIGNIFICANT DEFICIENCY

THE FINDING:

Financial services regulation changes constantly. SEC rule amendments, DOL fiduciary updates, state insurance regulation changes, IRS guidance, PCAOB standard revisions, and ERISA amendments all require firms to update processes, documentation, and client communications. Most firms learn about changes through industry newsletters, then manually assess impact and update procedures — if they remember to.

EVIDENCE:

200+material regulatory changes per year across financial services

15-25% of compliance team time spent on change management

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“The SEC updated the marketing rule 18 months ago. We are still finding client communications that reference the old disclosure language. Nobody owns change management because everybody owns a piece of it.”
— Chief Compliance Officer, multi-office RIA

FINDING VI: DATA ENTRY & SYSTEM TRANSLATION

MATERIAL WEAKNESS

THE FINDING:

Data moves between systems through manual re-entry across every financial services vertical. Trial balances get keyed into tax software. Client financial data gets reformatted between custodial platforms and planning tools. Carrier quotes get manually transcribed into comparison spreadsheets. Census data gets cleaned and mapped between HR systems and actuarial models. Every re-entry is an error opportunity. Every error creates rework.

EVIDENCE:

3.2data-entry errors per return or filing on average

38 min total cycle time per error (identify, note, correct, verify)

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“We have a $200K technology stack and I still manually key in half the data because none of our systems talk to each other.”
— Operations Manager, financial advisory firm

FINDING VII: KNOWLEDGE CONCENTRATION RISK

MATERIAL WEAKNESS

THE FINDING:

Critical client knowledge, process expertise, and relationship context live in individual people's heads — across every financial services discipline. When a senior advisor leaves, their entire book of business context walks out the door. When an experienced actuary retires, decades of assumption rationale disappears. When a managing broker departs, carrier relationships and renewal histories go with them.

EVIDENCE:

6-12 moto reach full productivity when a key person leaves

30% drop in realization and client satisfaction on affected accounts

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“When our senior advisor retired, we lost 22 years of client relationship context. His replacement spent 4 months just learning which clients prefer phone calls versus emails, and who has the complicated trust structure.”
— Managing Partner, wealth management firm

FINDING VIII: SEASONAL CAPACITY CRISIS

MATERIAL WEAKNESS

THE FINDING:

Financial services firms across verticals face intense seasonal demand: tax season for CPAs, year-end for auditors, open enrollment for benefits brokers, year-end valuations for actuaries, annual reviews for advisors. The same work happens every cycle — the same clients, the same filings, the same review process — but nothing gets faster because nothing is systematically improved between cycles.

EVIDENCE:

68%of early-career professionals cite workload intensity as primary reason for leaving

$50-80K replacement cost per departed professional

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“We do a "lessons learned" meeting after every busy period. We identify the same problems. We agree to fix them. Then the next cycle starts and we are right back in survival mode.”
— Managing Partner, regional firm

FINDING IX: CLIENT DOCUMENT COLLECTION & FOLLOW-UP

SIGNIFICANT DEFICIENCY

THE FINDING:

Requesting and tracking client-provided documents is a manual, email-driven process across financial services. CPAs chase PBC lists. Advisors request updated financial statements. Insurance brokers request census data. Actuaries chase plan amendments. Staff send requests, clients partially respond, staff follow up, documents arrive in different formats, and nobody has a clear picture of what is outstanding.

EVIDENCE:

4-6follow-up communications per client per engagement for outstanding documents

8-12 hours per engagement in document tracking and follow-up

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“I sent the document request list in January. It is March and I am still chasing the depreciation schedule. The client says they sent it — and they did. To an email address I no longer monitor.”
— Audit Staff, mid-market firm

FINDING X: REALIZATION & FEE LEAKAGE VISIBILITY

SIGNIFICANT DEFICIENCY

THE FINDING:

Whether billing hourly, on AUM, or fixed-fee, most financial services firms lack real-time visibility into engagement profitability. Partners make write-down decisions based on gut feel. Advisors do not know which client relationships are unprofitable until year-end analysis. By the time the data is assembled (manually, in Excel), the billing period is over.

EVIDENCE:

60-90 daylag between work performed and profitability visibility

8-15% of potential revenue lost to preventable write-downs and fee leakage

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“I found out we were at 72% realization on a major audit three months after the fact. If I had known at week 2, I could have managed the scope. Instead, we ate $40,000.”
— Audit Partner, mid-market firm

FINDING 11: PROPOSAL & PIPELINE BLINDNESS

SIGNIFICANT DEFICIENCY

THE FINDING:

New business development runs on email, memory, and the occasional CRM entry across financial services. Partners "own" relationships but do not systematically track proposals, follow-ups, or win rates. The firm has no idea which opportunities are in the pipeline, which are stalled, and which were lost to competitors who simply followed up first.

EVIDENCE:

8-12%of annual revenue lost to pipeline management gaps

$400K-$1.2M in missed revenue for a $10-15M firm

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“I asked our 12 partners to list their pending proposals. I got 12 different Excel files, 3 verbal lists, and 2 "I will get back to yous." We are a $20M firm operating like a sole practitioner.”
— COO, Top 200 firm

FINDING 12: CAPACITY PLANNING & WORKLOAD BLINDNESS

SIGNIFICANT DEFICIENCY

THE FINDING:

Most financial services firms have no real-time view of who is overloaded and who has capacity. Work gets assigned based on partner relationships and proximity rather than data. Some professionals are drowning while others are underutilized — and management does not know until someone burns out or a deadline slips.

EVIDENCE:

±20%accuracy of typical capacity estimates across the firm

Burnout-driven turnover + missed deadlines + inconsistent service quality

PRACTITIONER TESTIMONY:

“I did not know my best manager was working 65-hour weeks until she gave notice. She never complained. I never checked. That is a leadership failure, but it is also a data failure.”
— Office Managing Partner, multi-office firm

NOTE 4 — DETAILED ANALYSIS BY SEGMENT

Detailed Analysis by Vertical

Financial services is not one industry — it is five distinct verticals with shared operational DNA. Each has different workflows, different regulators, and different automation opportunities. We build for each one specifically.

CPA firms live in a world of workpapers, PBC lists, tick marks, review notes, and tax season deadlines. The work is methodical, evidence-based, and heavily regulated — which means the opportunity for structured automation is enormous. Not "AI that does the audit" — systems that handle the 60% of audit and tax work that is assembly, formatting, cross-referencing, and documentation so your people can focus on the 40% that requires professional judgment.

Key Workflows We Automate

Workpaper Assembly & Rollforward

Current: Manual rollforward from prior year, 2-4 hours per section

Automated: Intelligent rollforward with variance flagging, 15-30 minutes

Automation

85%

Tax Return Preparation & Data Flow

Current: Manual data entry from trial balance to tax software, 2-4 hours/return

Automated: Intelligent mapping with validation rules, 20-40 minutes

Automation

85%

Review Checklist & Quality Control

Current: Individual reviewer checklists (Word docs), inconsistent application

Automated: Dynamic checklists that learn from prior year notes, auto-flag known issues

Automation

80%

Client Document Tracking & PBC Management

Current: Email-based tracking, manual follow-up, 4-6 touch points per client

Automated: Portal with status tracking, automatic reminders, OCR processing

Automation

78%

Compliance Considerations

PCAOB AS 1215 (Audit Documentation)
AICPA AU-C 230 (Audit Documentation)
IRC Section 7216 (Tax Data Confidentiality)
AICPA SSTS No. 1-7 (Standards for Tax Services)
Circular 230 (Treasury Department)
State Board of Accountancy requirements
All returns and workpapers require human sign-off

Benchmark

Firms using structured automation in audit and tax reduce total engagement hours by 25-35% while improving documentation quality scores and reducing review cycles from 2.8 to 1.4 average.

Note 5 — Illustrative Engagements

What Transformation Looks Like

Example scenarios illustrating how automation addresses common challenges across financial services verticals. Results reflect industry benchmarks and conservative projections.

Audit Workpaper Automation

Regional CPA firm, 120 professionals, 350+ audit engagements/year

The Problem

Audit seniors spent 30-40% of fieldwork time on workpaper assembly, rollforward, and cross-referencing. Review cycles averaged 3.1 per engagement. Associate attrition was 42% within 18 months.

What We Built

A workpaper intelligence system that integrates with the existing Caseware environment. The system automatically rolls forward prior year workpapers, maps new chart of accounts to existing structures, flags variances above dynamic thresholds, and pre-populates analytical procedures from client data. Built around their specific workpaper structure, naming conventions, and review methodology.

Key Design Decision

We do not replace Caseware. We build around it. The team keeps their familiar environment — but the manual assembly, rollforward, and cross-referencing happens automatically. Zero learning curve.

Results

BeforeAfter

Workpaper assembly4.2 hrs35 min

Review cycles per engagement3.11.4

Average fieldwork hours—-32%

First-year associate retention58%84%

Realization on audit engagements—+11 points

Wealth Management Reporting Engine

Independent RIA, $1.8B AUM, 14 advisors, 680 client households

The Problem

Quarterly performance reporting consumed 3 full weeks of advisor and operations time. Data from Schwab exports did not match the format needed for client reports. Each advisor had their own reporting template. Operations staff spent 80% of Q-end on manual data reconciliation instead of client service.

What We Built

An automated reporting pipeline that pulls custodial data via API, reconciles it against the financial planning platform, generates standardized (but advisor-customizable) performance reports, and prepares meeting-ready client review packets with talking points tailored to each household.

Key Design Decision

We build the reporting around each advisor's communication style. One advisor prefers detailed performance attribution. Another wants a one-page summary with next steps. The system generates both from the same data — because adoption depends on fitting how people actually work.

Results

BeforeAfter

Quarterly reporting time3 weeks2 days

Data reconciliation errors12-15/quarter0-1/quarter

Advisor meeting prep time45 min/client8 min/client

Client households per advisor4972

Client satisfaction (NPS)—+22 points

Insurance Brokerage Renewal System

Employee benefits brokerage, 8 producers, 240 employer groups

The Problem

Renewal season meant 10-week sprints of manual carrier quoting, spreadsheet comparison building, and compliance verification. Producers spent 60% of their time on data work instead of client advisory. Small groups got less attention because the manual effort per group was the same regardless of size.

What We Built

A renewal automation system that aggregates carrier data, generates multi-carrier comparison reports, automates ACA affordability calculations, and produces client-ready presentations — all from a single intake per employer group.

Key Design Decision

We integrate with the carrier portals the brokers already use. No new systems to learn. The automation runs behind the existing workflow — brokers get finished comparisons instead of raw carrier PDFs.

Results

BeforeAfter

Renewal preparation time per group8-12 hrs2 hrs

ACA compliance calculation errors6%< 0.5%

Employer groups per producer3048

Small group retention78%94%

Producer time on advisory vs. admin40/6070/30

Actuarial Data Pipeline

Actuarial consulting firm, 25 professionals, 180 pension plan valuations/year

The Problem

Census data from plan sponsors arrived in inconsistent formats — different column names, missing fields, ID mismatches. Analysts spent 60-70% of engagement time on data cleaning and reconciliation. Assumption updates from IRS mortality table changes required manual updates across dozens of plan files. Errors in data preparation cascaded into valuation results.

What We Built

An intelligent data pipeline that ingests census files in any format, maps fields to a standardized schema, flags exceptions and anomalies for human review, and automatically updates assumption sets when regulatory changes are published.

Key Design Decision

We do not touch the actuarial models. The firm's valuation methodology is their intellectual property. We ensure the data flowing into those models is clean, consistent, and auditable — every time.

Results

BeforeAfter

Census data preparation12-20 hrs/plan1-2 hrs/plan

Data quality exceptions8-15/plan1-3/plan

Assumption update propagation2-3 days< 1 hour

Valuations per analyst per year712

Client turnaround time4-6 weeks2-3 weeks

NOTE 6 — SYSTEMS & CAPABILITIES

Systems & Capabilities

Every system is custom-built for your firm's specific workflows, tools, and people. These represent categories of what we build — not products you buy off a shelf.

Compliance Intelligence Platform

Automated compliance documentation and audit trail generation

Regulatory change monitoring with impact assessment

Examination readiness packages (SEC, DOL, state regulators)

Review note pattern recognition and pre-review checks

Cross-system document reconciliation and verification

Integrations

Caseware, CaseWare Cloud, compliance platforms (RIA in a Box, ComplySci, NRS), custodial systems (Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing), state regulatory portals

Why custom-built

Every firm has different compliance processes, different regulators, and different documentation standards. Your review methodology, your filing procedures, and your quality control steps are specific to YOUR practice. Off-the-shelf tools force you to change your process. We build around it.

NOTE 7 — INDEPENDENT AUDITOR'S REPORT ON CONTROLS

Trust & Compliance

We build systems for firms that are themselves regulated fiduciaries. That means our standards for data security, compliance, and accuracy are not just high — they are informed by the same frameworks you operate under every day.

I. Compliance Frameworks We Design For

SEC Investment Advisers Act of 1940 & associated rules

FINRA Rules and Regulatory Notices (dual-registered advisors)

AICPA Professional Standards (AU-C, AT-C, AR-C)

PCAOB Auditing Standards (AS 1215, AS 2110)

DOL Fiduciary Rule & ERISA compliance requirements

State insurance licensing and regulatory requirements

SOC 2 Type II (Security, Availability, Processing Integrity)

IRC Section 7216 (Tax Data Confidentiality)

HIPAA (where applicable to benefits and health plan data)

GDPR/CCPA (where applicable to client data)

II. Technology Stack & Security

Infrastructure

Cloud-native, SOC 2 compliant environments

Data Handling

End-to-end encryption, client data isolation

Access Control

Role-based access with audit logging

AI/ML

Private model deployment — your data never trains public models

Integration

API-first architecture with existing tool ecosystem

Monitoring

Real-time accuracy monitoring with human escalation

Backup

Automated backup with point-in-time recovery

III. What We Don't Do

1.We do not replace professional judgment — we eliminate the busywork before it
2.We do not train AI on your client data for other customers
3.We do not require you to change your methodology to fit our tools
4.We do not build "black box" systems — every output is traceable and explainable
5.We do not remove humans from the loop — we make the loop faster and more reliable
6.We do not bypass compliance requirements — we build better infrastructure to meet them

IV. Trust Signals

Every system includes full audit trail

All automations include human review checkpoints

Client data isolation (no cross-client data sharing)

Compliance-first architecture designed for regulated environments

NOTE 8 — EXHIBIT: RETURN ON INVESTMENT ANALYSIS

Return Analysis

Your numbers. Your firm. Your potential.

Firm Parameters

Number of Professionals75

Include partners, managers, seniors, and staff

Average Billing Rate$225

Blended rate across all professionals

Annual Engagements2,000

Total engagements processed per year

Current Realization Rate82%

Percentage of billed time actually collected

Avg Hours Per Engagement12

Average hours spent per engagement

Potential Recovery

Annual Hours Recovered

14,040 hours/year

Professionals x 2,080 hrs x 15% non-billable x 60% capture rate

Revenue Recovery Potential

$3,159,000

Hours Recovered x Average Billing Rate

Review Cycle Reduction

3,000 hours

Annual Engagements x 1.5 hours saved per engagement

Realization Improvement

$1,404,000

Professionals x 2,080 hrs x Billing Rate x 4% improvement

Total Annual Impact

$5,238,000

Sum of all recovery categories

ROI Multiple

27.9x

Total Annual Impact / $187,500 estimated investment

Assumptions & Sources

Assumptions

1.15% of professional time spent on automatable mechanical tasks (conservative; studies show 25-40%)
2.60% recovery rate on automatable time (not all time saved converts to billable/revenue-generating)
3.1.5 review/QC hours saved per engagement (from 2.8 to 1.5 cycles, ~35 min per cycle)
4.4 percentage point realization improvement (based on real-time visibility and early intervention)
5.Investment estimate of $2,500/professional/year (varies significantly by scope and vertical)

Sources

[1]AICPA Practice Management benchmarks
[2]Kitces Research advisor productivity studies
[3]Cerulli Associates advisory firm economics
[4]Thomson Reuters State of the Tax Professionals Report
[5]IBISWorld Financial Services industry analysis

NOTE 9 — MANAGEMENT REPRESENTATIONS

Client Perspectives

Perspectives on what automation means for firms like yours.

Imagine going into a technology project and getting an operational transformation. A partner who spends more time understanding your workflows than any consultant you have hired — then builds something that works the way you work, not the way a vendor thinks you should.
— Managing Partner perspective, Regional CPA firm scenario

What if your advisors spent 3 hours per quarter on reporting instead of 3 weeks? That is not a marginal improvement — it is a fundamentally different business model. More client touchpoints, deeper relationships, and the capacity to grow without hiring.
— RIA Operations Director perspective, Wealth management firm scenario

Most brokerages spend more on overtime during renewal season than the entire automation investment would cost. And the overtime drives people to quit, which costs even more in recruiting. It is a negative spiral that automation is designed to break.
— COO perspective, Insurance brokerage scenario

We do not ask you to change your actuarial models or your valuation methodology. We study how your data flows from client to model — every handoff, every reformatting step, every manual check — and we automate the pipeline. The actuarial judgment stays with your credentialed team.
— Our approach, How we work with actuarial firms

With real-time compliance documentation, SEC exam prep goes from a two-week fire drill to a one-click export. Not because you are cutting corners — because the audit trail builds itself as you work. That is the difference between compliance as overhead and compliance as infrastructure.
— Chief Compliance Officer perspective, RIA firm scenario

NOTE 10 — TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT

How an Engagement Works

From first conversation to systems running in production. No surprises, no black boxes, no disruption to your current operations.

Discovery & Workflow Mapping

2-3 weeks

We embed with your team. Not in a conference room — on the floor. We watch how your people actually work. We map every workflow, every handoff, every workaround, every "we do it this way because..." moment. We interview partners, managers, analysts, support staff, and compliance officers. We analyze your data — time entries, billing records, client communications, and system usage patterns.

What you get:

A Workflow Intelligence Report that maps your current state with surgical precision — including the $X00,000 in quantified annual waste we have identified and ranked by ROI.

If we cannot find meaningful automation opportunities, we will tell you — and we will tell you exactly what you should focus on instead.

System Architecture & Prioritization

1-2 weeks

Based on what we learned, we design the automation architecture. This is not a generic proposal — it is a technical blueprint specific to your firm, your tools, your workflows, and your regulatory requirements. We identify the highest-ROI opportunities and sequence them into a practical rollout plan that your team can absorb without disruption.

What you get:

A System Architecture Document with specific deliverables, timelines, integration requirements, and projected ROI for each phase. You will know exactly what you are getting, when, and what it will cost.

Build & Integration

4-8 weeks per system

We build. Your team keeps working — we do not disrupt operations. We integrate with your existing tools (we do not rip and replace). We test with real data. We iterate based on feedback from the actual users — the advisors, analysts, managers, and staff who will use these systems every day.

What you get:

Production-ready systems running alongside your existing infrastructure. Not a demo. Not a prototype. Systems that handle real work on day one.

Adoption & Optimization

Ongoing

We do not hand off and disappear. We monitor adoption, measure actual ROI against projections, and optimize based on real-world usage. When your team discovers new workflows to automate (and they will), we build those too. When your tools change, regulators update requirements, or your firm grows, we adapt the systems.

What you get:

A technology partner that evolves with your firm — not a vendor that sells you a license and moves on.

In the matter of operational efficiency

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Engagement Letter

COMES NOW the undersigned firm, by and through its managing member, and respectfully proposes an engagement to eliminate manual workflows, recover non-billable time, and transform operational efficiency.

Your firm's best people are doing their worst work.

Not because they are not talented — because your systems force them to spend half their time on tasks that do not require their license, their credential, or their expertise. That changes when your technology is built for how YOU work.

Scope of Proposed Services

1.Comprehensive workflow mapping of your firm's actual (not documented) processes
2.Quantified ROI analysis of automation opportunities ranked by impact
3.Technical architecture designed around your existing tools and regulatory requirements
4.Custom-built systems designed for high adoption — built around how your people actually work

No-cost discovery assessment

No platform lock-in — you own everything we build

Systems integrate with your existing tools

Zero disruption to current operations during build

Compliance-first architecture for regulated environments

Or email hello@scalewerk.net directly.

Respectfully submitted,

SCALEWERK CONSULTING LLC

Counsel for Operational Excellence

hello@scalewerk.net