What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
AI isn't replacing accountants—it's turning them into strategic advisors.
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
What happens when cutting-edge AI meets the traditionally conservative world of accounting? A revolution that's transforming how high-net-worth individuals and family offices manage their wealth.
Meet Brian, CEO of Montreal-based Wealth Write-Up, who brings a fascinating perspective on how technology is reshaping investment accounting. Having implemented AI solutions across multiple industries for over a decade, he's now applying those lessons to the financial world with remarkable results.
The numbers tell a compelling story: high-net-worth clients often generate over 100,000 financial transactions annually. Traditionally, processing this data required armies of accountants manually entering information—a process that could take months and cost upwards of $100,000 in professional fees. AI-powered solutions are dramatically reducing this burden while improving accuracy.
But this isn't about replacing accountants; it's about elevating them. By automating routine tasks, accounting professionals can transform into strategic advisors who provide genuine value beyond compliance. They gain the time and tools to identify tax optimization opportunities, navigate cross-jurisdictional complexities, and help clients make informed decisions about their wealth.
The timing couldn't be more critical. With the Great Wealth Transfer looming—where trillions will move from Baby Boomers to younger generations—sophisticated planning tools are essential. Modern accounting platforms aren't just tracking numbers; they're helping preserve legacies across generations.
There's still skepticism, of course. One major client even included an explicit AI opt-out clause in their contract. But as Brian notes, the pressure for adoption isn't coming from technology vendors—it's coming from clients themselves who are experiencing AI in other aspects of their lives and demanding similar innovations from their financial advisors.
Want to understand how financial technology is evolving beyond spreadsheets and manual processes? Listen now to discover what happens when accounting meets artificial intelligence.
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Hey everybody, fascinating guest today, a leader in investment accounting technology. We're going to talk so many topics, from AI to compliance, client experience and the future of wealth management. Brian, how are you?
Speaker 2:Doing great today. Thanks, Evan. Nice to come on board and get a chance to catch up with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for being here. You have a very interesting bio and background. Maybe start with that. Introduce yourself, your background and your journey over the last couple of decades.
Speaker 2:Great, yeah, thanks. Thanks for the invitation opportunity to talk. I've been in software in various different capacities for a number of years Maybe too long is what I would look at it back from the old desktop days all the way into a lot of the early cloud and SaaS items around that. So I'd been spent a lot of time really focusing on kind of business to business software in various different verticals and, say, niches in some cases. From going in and taking the first AI intellectual property product out into the market back in the early 2010s with a company called IPcom Really understood a lot of the headwinds of getting patent searchers to adopt a new way to find information about intellectual property using AI all the way to e-commerce, where I spent a bit of time bringing in AI to help shoppers understand product and understand what they're looking at.
Speaker 2:And I recently had an opportunity to go into the fintech world where I got appointed as the CEO of a Montreal-based company called Wealth Write-Up that offers a product for investment accountants and others to go through and look at their portfolios. We provide really true accounting systems around that and it's been an area where taking a bit of the AI side once again kind of a theme bringing in AI to areas that haven't necessarily adopted it and been necessarily thought of at the forefront of it. So now, where I'm at now is doing the same to see what we can do to transform the world of investment accounting using really a combination of rigor, things that accountants do, using AI to really look at where it applies and where it goes in to improve the way in which people work and interact.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. Well, let's talk about accounting. We'll start there as an industry that's ripe for change, disruption and there are many opportunities. An industry that's ripe for change, disruption and there are many opportunities. An industry that's kind of old school, right, I mean it's. I don't think we have ticker tape around anymore, but certainly-.
Speaker 2:Few places, but yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:Love to do things the way they've always been done. So you know, meet, talk Gen I and AI and accounting. How do you see AI specifically being used today and what are the big opportunities to kind of reshape the field and client relationships tomorrow?
Speaker 2:I think you look at it with AI. I mean, really it's an interesting part. It's AI or die has been one parts where a lot of others have looked and, candidly, there are limitations and there's areas where AI can really accelerate. A lot of others have looked and, candidly, there are limitations and there's areas where AI can really accelerate a lot of work as well. And we look at it from anywhere that I've been focusing on in my journeys in the past what is automation and really what the way is? What automation is a way to look at to say, okay, are there tasks that are repetitive, that have predictable outcomes, that we can apply technology to go through and really improve the behavior of that? So, ultimately, almost like going back years ago when people would take going through and digging ditches, then came front loaders, then came other ways to go in and automate. That AI really isn't much different in that part. What it's able to do is process enormous sums of data and come with predictable outcomes based on that, and that's how these GPTs work and a lot of other parts on that. It's really statistical modeling tools. So we take that for accounting. An old school area where you deal with very precise numbers, extreme precision, extreme rigor. Then you have to apply rules, you have to apply a lot of transformations and other parts around that, and we found that there's ways to really expedite a lot of the general kind of repetitive tasks going through and taking broker statements that people have and feeding that into an accounting system, being able to go through and look for anomalies that may occur inside of numbers and all that.
Speaker 2:So really the way I look at it is AI and the future of accounting provides a way for efficiency to be driven into the whole process. So, for example, what's called a write-up thus the name of our wealth write-up for a company, a write-up is that whole process of going in, taking troves of data. So sometimes a high net worth individual, a family office, may have over 100,000 transaction items in a year stock sales, private equity investments, capital calls all these various different forms that are out there. That data has to get put in, processed and dealt with and historically and even today, rooms of people will enter a lot of data in. The problem is you look at what's the real value of that? There isn't strategic value and that's the part we look at is what can an accountant be? You know when I pay for my accountant, for my own business and the ones that we work with.
Speaker 2:We like to get to where they become a strategic advisor so they can come in and say, all right, well, you're spending here, or maybe, with your taking these particular items, here's where you can have better tax treatment or other parts around there. So we see at this part that the accountants have relationships with customers, they're trusted and being additionally to where they can certify. They have the fiduciary ability to say, yeah, these are compliant with laws and this is really what they would sign off to. But also giving them time where they can take what might've been something to take months and I've seen upwards of $100,000 in professional fees to go in and crunch and punch in data. And this is an area where AI just one of many is a way to go through and just deal with a lot of back office processes and parts like that. So that's a part where it just makes it easier and just giving people that ability to automate and see things a lot faster just to get the machine running quicker. As we look at it, Brilliant.
Speaker 1:So you know, when it comes to accounting firms family offices as well they're very traditional, very cautious about adopting new technology. So why change? What's the shift towards more modern accounting, computing applications, etc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny you bring that in. I look at it from there is it's an interesting part. I can kind of go back and clearly the contracts we're signing for some of the larger big four and others that we work with. There's a lot around AI and how we deal with it and you can see we're sort of figuring it out where it goes in and around. That I think the impetus is.
Speaker 2:If I go back a couple of years ago and I go back to when we were bringing in AI, we didn't even use the term AI when we were selling a search engine to patent examiners and others and it was a case where they would look at it and we had to explain in new terms well, this is a big data solution, this is a way where it can recognize patterns and go through and find parts there. So we were really being very evangelical about okay, here's your approach. We had to take a very pointed point of view to get people to lean into it and look into it. And once again, in other organizations where there's billions of dollars at stake around patent searches and others, but we were able to demonstrate that, I think where we're accounting. It's an interesting part where we're seeing somewhat of a similar part where there's a degree of skepticism. It was recently Thompson Reuters came out with a study in accounting where some of the slower ones to adopt this technology with skepticism and that's the thing.
Speaker 2:Our clients have a lot. I'll give an example One contract we signed there's a very clear opt-out clause. The client wants the ability to explicitly opt out of AI in a solution if they see it. So we obviously respect that and bring that in. But it also speaks to a louder sense. There's that question of where it comes in and parts where where I think that we're seeing a lot in in really from what our view is with customers and adopting this technology is it's their clients that are asking for it. Their clients are pushing. Everyone plays with chat, gpt plays with the other parts around that, and there's an area where it's sort of clients going to accountants saying, hey, where's AI with this part? Certainly, boardrooms have been pushing companies to it and, candidly, 90% of a lot of the AI projects at corporations have not had the success that they've wanted. But it's an area where there's that demand that's getting pushed out there just because of, as you look at it, the belief of what it can do and other parts around that. So it is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, caution is good. Even big companies like Microsoft, copilot Functions and Excel there was an article this week warns that be careful about using copilot in Excel for any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility. So that may turn a few accountants off, but it's not just a tool for their internal or personal productivity. Gen AI and AI are being used to really enhance across the board consumer customer experiences. But what does that mean for client experiences, which is very intimate, as you say? How does more advanced accounting software improve that client experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good point. You look at it where it comes in a lot of the value. It's the kind of two unlocks. There is the part where certainly there's a lot of price pressure. There's other items around that. That's where the customer experience they're getting what they would deem better for that part. So that's a big driver. As I look at it. People love the use cases and when you're selling a business case to a client, there's the awesome things that they love to have. And then, okay, bottom line, how do the dollars and cents actually work? Especially since we're dealing with accountants. They know this stuff inside and out as we go into.
Speaker 2:So the part we've looked at with accounting firms and others have been going in and in really with clients. What's excitement is like? Okay, we have this. Can I? For example, if I'm going to go sell stocks and shares, can I come up with data? Well, before it might've been a whole process of taking time and looking at it and seeing that there's parts. Now they can come back with a very quick even if it's not perfect, but a time sensitive answer saying, yeah, we've modeled and we can see. This is where you're concentrated in these stocks. You have a lot of losses here.
Speaker 2:There's a pool of data you can tap into.
Speaker 2:So the insights that, once again, accountants can come back into and really reposition themselves to be strategic advisors, saying we're the guardians of your data, we are going to sign up for, really saying that this is certified, this is something that's been audited.
Speaker 2:We're also employing a lot of tools that can bring in and identify even more items, fraud opportunities and other parts there. So they really get to that area where they're going in and being able to and part of it is just the clarity, simplicity and confidence in what they can do for their clients at this part. So that whole experience from onboarding where a new client comes in maybe a high net worth individual, a family office they're bringing in all their holding companies, all that information that's out there, digging the information, digging through it and then being able to apply that into a tool set very quickly, where clients then can be responsive, they can give them better view, they can be more strategic. Ai it may not give you the right answer, but it can, and that's part of the caution with it. But at the same time, it can give you areas to point at and maybe help visualize and compress and compact large data sets into something that's at least tangible and reviewable.
Speaker 1:at this part, Wow, that's really empowering. So you know, longer term, there is a fear or worry that AI will replace accountants and that you'll have you know your accounting avatar just on your laptop and that person, that thing, does your books. So how do you think about that challenge and how do you position you know yourself as a partner versus their replacement in the future?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny. I went in front of one of our largest customers. They're a multifamily office, so they provide family office services for many other wealthy families in Canada and they have armies of accountants and other folks that provide various different family office services. And I was sitting there and one of the people who brought us in, our executive sponsor, pulled me aside and said hey, brian, you're going to be talking to data entry people and others about using AI and automation. We want to be sensitive. We don't want to upset them to where their jobs are. Their job's going to go away. Well, the reality is, and I pointed out, I said okay, fair enough, I'm not here to tell hey, you guys are all irrelevant in another year or so. Part of it is clearly. I don't think that's the case. And I look at it, where AI is there. It's just like when people were digging ditches years ago and suddenly automation came in. Or people were picking crops off of the land years ago and now there's combines, there's other items that are out there in farming that have provided massive, massive leverage for labor and activity. So the way I look at it, this is a similar thing, but for kind of the last bastion of white collar professionals, so it's absolutely going to have an impact. There's no question that where it is and that's what's going to force is a lot of value and valuation. Okay, what are you generally doing to drive value, and can you learn these tools and understand their weaknesses and strengths that are out there around that? So kind of that the man versus machine as we would look at it from there. It's there, but those that can go in and harness it, understand it and use it to where they can, they can do their jobs better, so they can provide information back and forth.
Speaker 2:That was part of where I looked at it with the people inputting data. My comment to them was clear. I said look, yeah, this is here. It's not to replace you. You're going to still have to review this information, you're still going to have to put it in, but you're not going to be keying things and getting a lot of pressure for errors. You're not going to be. You're not a commodity. You're now a person where your brain's going to be more plugged in to look at the data that's coming in and you can accelerate this.
Speaker 2:I mean candidly, this customer. Their business is growing 25% per annum and it's an area where they can't hire people fast enough and the people keying in data hate it. So now it's an area where now processing more data, getting more insights and other parts around there, they really embraced it and I think from there, framing it, explaining it there's parts I think too, at the same part to your original question is it going to be a GPT? There's someone who says, hey, do this accounting. There's always that view of that and will at some point aspects of it.
Speaker 2:For certain and I can't predict in pure certainty, but I've been doing this for 10, 15 years and looking at AI and to other parts around that, there is a level of trust that us as human beings have to have around the technology. I think we have to be suspicious of what it comes out with, because it doesn't always have the right answers. We need to upskill ourselves to understand it, interact with it and use it and then from there we'll get better benefits that come out across the board. So it'll definitely benefit. But there's going to be that part where people are going to have to go in that AI or die, as I was saying earlier, of really adopting it and bringing it into wealth management and wealth accounting, which will be a key part, and it'll change, but it'll be good.
Speaker 1:I think it will be. And the other opportunity is in multi-jurisdictional kind of areas. You live and work in Canada and the US and there seems like so much opportunity to streamline areas like compliance and taxation and you know risk across jurisdictions. That seems like low-hanging fruit today for your software, other software.
Speaker 2:You know very good point. You look at it from there with. We're seeing more and more with family offices, so they'll generate a lot of wealth and they'll look at it and say, okay, there's different jurisdictions to go into and the younger members may, in Canada, decide they want to build a business in the States or vice versa, or in Europe. So there's a lot of different repatriation, there's different rules, there's different parts around there that go in and clearly, what we've focused on, certainly in our product, we've provided rigor and flexibility. So the rigor is there's pure, true, acid-tested accounting to where we can go through. The rules are here. They're inflexible, they will enforce what the law comes in. So we look at cross-jurisdiction and you couple with AI where you can ask questions by having a trusted source of data. We look at it from a relevance, augmented generation, as it's called, looking at a custom set of data where you can ask questions and then get prospective answers around that about what does it take to sell shares around this.
Speaker 2:Certainly, with the US administration and just the world's trade will be changing certainly, whether good or bad. Who knows what life will bring in, but there's change going afoot and these are things that there's a lot of contemplation, certainly for high net worth individuals, as to where it makes sense for their business investments that they go into. So that's really where we've been a lot involved is there is that ability. We need to get fast data. Can we go in and provide quick data? What are tax liabilities? What does their general ledger look like? What are all the various different parts that are going in? And what does it look like to have entities where you're now saying all right, rather than having a holding company in Canada, do we put it in the US? What does it look like to move profits back and forth and other parts around that with respect to securities and other investments that may happen?
Speaker 2:And this is clearly an area that we see more and more going in. Data is going to be there. There's more and more complexity. There's definitely more and more regulations that change on a regular basis, and these are the things that once again, years ago, people going in with Excel spreadsheets and, even before that, ticker tapes and book ledgers. Now it's an area where you're dealing with massive amounts of data between different parts that we need to go in and understand, and that's where we continue to see that and that's the part where we're clearly what we view is we view that we can be a strategic partner in trying to go and help and unlock a lot of that that others will go into, and it goes back to that strategic advisor aspect for us to look at as well.
Speaker 1:Got it. So over the next few years there's something called the Great Wealth Transfer. That will happen as boomers transfer wealth to their children, grandchildren. I'm sure many, many kids, grandkids, want that to happen faster.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Describe the phenomenon or what's happening here and how it will impact. You know companies like yourself, but also the industry and how it will impact companies like yourself, but also the industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are certainly in our business, working with high net worth individuals and family offices and others. There is an enormous I mean regardless even if people have a family office or not. There's a lot of planning that goes in and this is where certainly we wrote software to deal with the different forms. It's a case of you look at do you set up? What does it mean to sell shares? Did you have a trust at this part to go in and look at how you would go in and distribute? Are there different tax jurisdictions that make more sense where you can transfer wealth? And one of the problems that classically happened in Canada for years was the inheritance taxes, where somebody may build a billion dollar company and upon passing it down, part of it, they would have to sell the company because they couldn't afford the tax or they'd have to sell part of it by transferring from generation to generation. So a lot of these questions are there and it takes a lot of careful planning, but data-based planning where people can go in and look at that. So there is exactly as boomers have worked a bit longer than other generations into their seventies, as boomers have worked a bit longer than other generations, into their 70s. In many cases my parents are boomers. I can attest to that part where there is trillions of dollars that will be changing hands at this part and clearly into different generations. So a lot of it is how do you manage around that in this part?
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of different parts we look at with legacy and family governance is a lot of it Sort of going from the first generation, the second generation, the third generation. The family offices are there to protect that generational wealth. So a lot of it is where where we've gone and we purpose built software to really help in that process of being able to put those entities together and go in and around that. That's what we've seen a real niche and a knee more than a niche in many cases. But this is where we've looked at it and, yeah, this goes into where people may go in, even above and beyond just transferring from here's one investment company to others. You may see a third generation that doesn't want to operate the company or there may be we've seen others where the third generation doesn't want to sell or the second generation may not want to be involved with it. So there's all kinds of things around disputes and other parts that get resolved.
Speaker 2:Family office, multifamily office companies and other advisors are really good at navigating that. We provide a tool set to give hard data, say, okay, here's what it looks like, here's what it is to manage it, here's where it is to really go in and see what it takes, based on the goals that people would set. And this goes back into what may have been a pure accounting firm years ago, crunching numbers. Now they can shift their business to say now we're involved in strategic advising. To say, yeah, here's where you should think about your legacy. Maybe philanthropic goals, succession planning, all those business services that instead of writing a $200,000 or a million dollar check to just get numbers crunched, they can now get better advice and other parts around that as well.
Speaker 1:Well done, Very impressive. So we're headed into the busy fall run up to the end of year for many companies. What are you looking forward to? What's on your radar over the next few weeks and months?
Speaker 2:It's crazy with this market too. It's been in certainly the e-commerce market when involved with business to business and business to consumer. We always knew the fourth quarter was no technology adoption. Certainly after Thanksgiving in the US, black Friday all the way into the holidays. And in this part we're finding with the accountant world similar case. You have Q1, can't get a hold of anyone on the phone. They're doing taxes, they're getting things ready in the Q2 for people that may have a March 31 year end and there's different things. So we certainly see the busy seasons with the dips and areas from sales versus support and different parts around that. So certainly where we are now, they're short term or getting ready into a busy season.
Speaker 2:The other is we're pretty excited with our products. We went in. Our company goes back, its heritage is 25 years. We had a desktop product that was literally was written by accountants to deal with these problems, realizing that, okay, we've got thousands of Excel spreadsheets with stock schedules and all this. How do you even keep it in check? So, 1999, they looked at it. A couple of accountants got together and said you know, we can use a computer to kind of put this together and ask more simplistic questions or more structured questions to accounting professionals to come up with that, and that was really the genesis of it. So with that we went into a full cloud version, kind of being the first in our space, and so we've got some interesting AI adoption and AI capabilities we're bringing in as well. So we've got new product releases in the next couple of months that are coming out as we continue to work with it.
Speaker 2:And now we're seeing this, the rapid adoption season, where a lot of our clients were looking at it, saying, okay, we want to go on a modern platform, but we're also now open for business looking at ways that they can get their things done. So it's fourth quarter. There's a lot going on. There's sort of that breadth of not having to do the end-of-year activities, but there's always the day-to-day and then that chance where our clients can look at, okay, how can we fundamentally improve our business? Now we can better suit their customers. That's what we've gotten involved in those parts as well. So definitely we took a little break I can't say a slight break in the summer, but now it's guns a-blazing and keeping busy right now.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations on all the success and have a great autumn. It's our time to thrive here in the Northeast of. America. So we like that, and thanks for sharing your insights. I learned a lot.
Speaker 2:No, thank you. No, it's happy to do it and really it's an interesting part Accounting. We always thought, hey, it's kind of there and done, but it's always the stereotype of accountants. But at the end of the day it's actually a lot more fun than what I thought, in a good way. So definitely enjoying the time and enjoying the challenges that it poses as well.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks everyone for listening, watching, sharing and checking out the new TV show TechImpact TV, now on Bloomberg and Fox Business. Thanks, brian, thanks everyone, thank you. Thanks Evan.