From transactional to trust: How Canadian accountants are redefining their role

Pouya Zangeneh is Senior Vice President of Business Banking at Scotiabank. To learn more about how the Scotiabank Accountant Banking Program can support your practice, visit scotiabank.com/accountants.

ACROSS Canada, the accounting profession is experiencing a shift. Accountants are moving beyond transactional relationships into a strategic advisory role for the clients they serve. 

But between managing your own day-to-day operations, navigating seasonal cash flow and planning for your next stage of growth, finding the time and resources to show up as a trusted advisor you want to be for your clients can be a challenge. 

Pouya Zangeneh, Senior Vice President of Business Banking at Scotiabank, leads a team dedicated to helping professional practices work through these practice management challenges. His team works exclusively with accountants and other professionals, with deep sector knowledge and expertise that goes well beyond banking. We spoke with Pouya about the trends reshaping the profession, the growth barriers he sees most often, and what it looks like when the right support is in place. 

You spend a lot of time with accountants across Canada. What themes are coming up most in those conversations right now?

We’re seeing the profession evolve. Accountants have been moving away from focusing on just reporting and compliance, towards becoming trusted advisors for their clients for a while now, driven by client demand. Our recent research has found about a third of Canadian small business owners get their advice on business decisions from their accountants, putting them second only to family and friends. That is significant and speaks to the strong relationships accountants can, and do, build. 

While small business owners seeking advice from their accountant creates opportunities, it also puts pressure on the time accountants have to run their own business. Accounting practices have very specific needs, so we’re focused on simplifying banking and providing accountants with a trusted advisor who understands their business and delivers personalized advice to support their goals. 

When a practice wants to grow, what are the biggest barriers? 

When we talk to clients, three barriers consistently come up when it comes to what prevents them from growing. 

The first is the capital. How much does it cost to grow organically, invest in talent and technology or purchase another firm? The second is resources. That’s more about “where do I start? How do I think about growth?” And the third is the time it takes to actually get it done. 

Our Scotiabank Accountant Banking Program[1] aims to address all three. We make credit available to help manage through cash flow fluctuations. We provide lending designed for accounting practices including term loans that offer up to 100 per cent financing[2], which shows our confidence in this client segment. Our Professional Banking Specialists are solely focused on supporting the professions including accounting and legal professions, so they understand the business end to end and can help clients think through what growth actually looks like for them. We take the friction out on the banking side, so accountants have more time to focus on growth of their business rather than managing day-to-day transactions. 

Can you share what that kind of support looks like in a real situation? 

We recently helped a client who came to us from another bank while they were trying to purchase and merge with another firm. They told us that what mattered most was working with a partner that truly understood their business. Because of that, we were able to write a proper financial case for what the merger would look like, and then we committed to 100 per cent funding of the acquisition. The client told us “None of the others understood us. The fact that you fully funded this showed the commitment and belief you had in my business.” That meant a lot and reflects the kind of relationship we are aiming to build. From there, we handled all the operational banking work as well, making everything more streamlined and bringing the right cash management solutions for both operations combined. 

We are committed to being client first, always — actively listening to our clients, keeping their needs at the forefront and adding value for each client with unique requirements. 

Is buying or selling a practice something that comes up often with the clients you work with? 

Succession planning is a growing conversation in the profession right now and there is a lot of consolidation happening. You have a new generation of professionals coming in, establishing their business, trying to grow by merging with or taking over a practice. That is a trend we see across small businesses in Canada broadly, but it is especially pronounced in accounting. 

For an individual practitioner, this is often something they’ll do once or twice in their career. Our Specialists go through these cycles with different clients in different contexts, so they can help think through the valuation, the operational complexity of bringing two practices together and the right financing structure. Further, succession often connects to personal wealth and family legacy. We can bring in other trusted advisors at the bank, including our Scotia Wealth Management partners, to make sure we’re helping our clients understand their full financial picture. 

When the banking side is running well, what does that actually open up for an accountant? 

There’s what it does for their own business and what it does for their clients. For your own business, you get better visibility into your cash flow, which means you can manage things a little better and have more confidence when you want to invest in growth. Some of the admin goes away too. When you use the cash management and digital merchant tools, transactions happen in a streamlined way that’s embedded within your business. It opens up more capacity, allowing you to spend more time understanding your clients and helping them grow. At the end of the day, keeping client relationships strong is the goal.  

It comes down to being intentional about the kind of business you want to build and surrounding yourself with partners who understand your goals. As the profession continues to change in meaningful ways, we see Canadian accountants becoming even more connected, resilient and central to the success of small business they serve and we’re focused on supporting them along the way. 

To learn more about how the Scotiabank Accountant Banking Program can support your practice, visit scotiabank.com/accountants.

FOOTNOTES
1. To be eligible for the Scotiabank Accountant Banking Program, you must be a member in good standing of a Chartered Professional Accountant provincial or regional accounting body and hold a Chartered Professional Accountant designation. Continued eligibility for benefits of the Scotiabank Accountant Banking Program is subject to annual verification of client’s CPA designation status upon request by Scotiabank.
2. Subject to credit approval. This is not a commitment to lend.

This sponsored content was produced by Scotiabank; Canadian Accountant's editorial department was not involved in its creation. Images courtesy Scotiabank.