When Matthew Kidd, CPA/PFS, sat down with a pair of well-off older clients, they were sure they were going to run out of money.
“Objectively looking at it — virtually no chance,” said Kidd, president of Livonia, Mich.-based Kidd Advisors and Kidd Financial Planning. “But that was their concern, and they were losing sleep over it.”
Being able to assure them they were not in danger of running out of money was “a different kind of reward and personal fulfillment,” Kidd said.
The opportunity to help clients with their entire financial life — and therefore with their fears, hopes, and dreams — is one reason many CPAs find it rewarding to provide personal financial planning (PFP) services. It’s also a good business move, as technology reshapes the provision of tax services.
Tax preparation is getting faster and increasingly automated thanks to software advances and artificial intelligence, and that creates a business model question for CPAs: When each return takes fewer billable hours, and more people are using software to prepare their returns, do you compensate by trying to do more returns or pivot to a deeper relationship with clients?
Demand for financial planning is growing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that from 2024 to 2034 the number of personal financial adviser jobs will increase 10%, adding more than 30,000 new advisers. For many CPAs focused on tax services, the next question is, “How do I add PFP to my business?”
A NATURAL FIT
The good news for CPAs is that the foundation is already poured.
“In my experience, personal financial planning is at least 75% tax related,” said Susan Tillery, CPA/PFS, cofounder of Kennesaw, Ga.-based Paraklete Financial, a fee-for-service financial planning firm. She is the co-author of the AICPA’s Personal Financial Specialist (PFS) curriculum and course materials.
All the major elements of financial planning — estate planning, retirement savings, insurance, investment management, charitable giving, and more — carry tax consequences.
Many CPAs focused on tax services are already providing advice on these matters, Kidd noted. “They’re just not calling it financial planning,” he said.
Formally adding PFP as a service, whether alongside tax work or as the sole focus, gives CPAs a chance to deepen their understanding of clients’ finances. To do that effectively often means shifting from once-a-year “do the returns” meetings to an ongoing conversation that covers taxes, investments, insurance, estate planning, and more.
Adding financial planning to your tax practice requires three steps:
- Decide if it’s the right fit for you. The work is more relational and, in some ways, less certain than core tax services. Where tax work requires adherence to well–understood rules and regulations, financial planning is about helping clients navigate an inherently uncertain future.
- Get the training and licensing you need to provide high–quality advice confidently. Part of that is filling in any knowledge gaps around areas such as investing and insurance. Part of it involves developing the confidence to know what questions to ask clients and how to find answers.
- Select your business model. There are many ways to provide financial planning services and many ways to get paid for it. Some CPAs continue to provide core tax services, while others may delegate or refer the returns to a trusted tax adviser.
IS FINANCIAL PLANNING FOR YOU?
Before adding new licenses or credentials, do an honest gut check.
Jonathan Gassman, CPA, who runs Firm Foundation Family Wealth in Boca Raton, Fla., starts with mindset: “You have to understand your own psyche,” he said. Are you even interested in this work, or do you simply want to prepare returns (which, he stresses, is a perfectly good answer)? He’s a believer in assessment tools, such as the Kolbe and the DISC personality tests, or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, to help clarify one’s strengths, weaknesses, and values.
Financial planning requires getting to know clients, and often their families, more intimately than traditional tax services do. It involves understanding not just their finances, but their quirks and big dreams. “The biggest thing is really your communication skills,” Kidd said. “Whether you refer to yourself as an adviser or therapist, you are far more deeply involved in your clients’ lives.”
Financial planners hear about family health crises, estranged children, and marital tension.
“Clients open up about things that are much deeper than they might in a normal tax setting,” said Lyle Benson, CPA, founder and president of L.K. Benson & Co. in Baltimore. “In an ideal world, clients are really telling you their greatest fears, their greatest goals, and what really motivates them and what keeps them up at night.”
Traditional tax work is largely compliance-driven, based on what has already happened, and involves a generally clear set of rules and procedures. Financial planning, on the other hand, is about asking questions, helping people navigate the future, and dealing with the inherent uncertainty of investment returns, health outcomes, and family decisions.
Gassman described reorienting from looking backward, as you do when preparing a tax return, to looking forward — being “a navigator rather than a historian.”
Career timing and intention matters, too. Kidd thinks financial planning may not be a great career shift for a CPA with less than five years until full retirement but could be a great fit for somebody trying to transition out of tax in five years and continue to work in semi-retirement with a small number of PFP clients. Someone who would like a more balanced seasonal workload and still has 10 or 15 years or longer remaining in their career could be an ideal candidate.
“I think you need to have somewhat of a long-term focus on it for it to work,” Kidd said.
EARNING QUALIFICATIONS AND GROWING CONFIDENCE
A number of licenses and financial planning certifications are available. (See the sidebar, “Pathways to Personal Financial Planner,” at the end of this article.) The AICPA’s PFS credential is one of the most accessible credentialing paths for AICPA members, as it builds on a CPA’s existing knowledge.
There are multiple options for obtaining the PFS credential, depending on your level of experience. Generally, however, it requires passing the PFS exam and acquiring enough hours of PFP experience.
The PFS credential requires CPAs to have spent significant time — 3,000–7,500 hours — doing PFP-related work. Tax compliance services generally can only account for 1,000—2,000 of those hours. So, how do you get the remaining hours and the knowledge required for the PFS credential?
Brianne Smith, CPA/PFS, Ph.D., an assistant professor of accounting at Troy University in Troy, Ala., who also owns an accounting firm and a financial planning business in Montgomery, Ala., suggested a couple of ways to answer this question.
You could find a group — perhaps within your firm — that provides investment management or estate and trust services and offer to help them out. “Get hooked up with the investment team and start getting invited into the investment meetings and working alongside and helping with some of the planning,” she said.
The PFS credential is, for CPAs, accepted in most jurisdictions as a substitute for the Series 65 examination (the Uniform Investment Adviser Law Exam), widely required to register and be state licensed as a professional giving investment advice (investment adviser representative (IAR)). Once you earn your PFS credential, there’s no need to take the Series 65 exam.
Alternatively, Smith said, you could take the Series 65 exam and use the state-registered IAR status to start providing more investment and financial planning advice. Over time, those hours can be used to qualify for the PFS credential.
BUILDING A BUSINESS
The next step on the path to providing PFP services is to decide on a business model — or at least the model you’ll use to start providing those services. Kidd said there are basically four options:
- Offering fixed–fee or hourly planning with no asset management.
- Affiliating with a broker–dealer or registered investment adviser (RIA) as an investment adviser representative.
- Forming your RIA business while using a turnkey asset management platform (TAMP) for the back–office work of managing investments.
- Running your own RIA business, including the asset management functions.
In each case, the trade-off is between costs and control over the investment management process.
The more investment management infrastructure you take on, the more control you have over the investment implementation, reporting, and the client investment experience. But building it can be expensive. Affiliating with an RIA or using a TAMP for back-office work means there’s less recordkeeping and compliance work for you, but you’ll end up paying more in fees.
That trade-off looks different for CPAs who offer planning without managing assets. In that model, the CPA may have less control over investment execution but may retain a high level of independence in coordinating the client’s broader financial picture with other professionals, including investment or insurance advisers, attorneys, and bankers.
Although many financial planners manage investments for their clients, not all do. This model can look quite different from an investment-management-centered practice. Tillery’s Paraklete Financial, for example, functions more like a family office — coordinating other professionals (accountants, lawyers, insurance advisers, bankers) — to manage a client’s complete financial picture.
This highlights the flexibility of building a financial planning services business. CPAs can include the services they are competent, trained, and authorized to provide, while collaborating with other professionals as needed to implement the financial plan.
Because regulations for investment advisers and CPAs are different, Kidd and others recommend creating an entirely separate company for the investment management work. Otherwise, he said, CPAs may find their traditional tax and accounting business facing much greater oversight and regulation.
Many CPAs will end up contracting with an outside firm for RIA services. That decision, Smith said, can be challenging. She recommends vetting potential RIAs to ensure they value CPAs’ unique expertise and perspective. Not all do.
When she started her transition into financial planning, Smith faced another challenge: Most RIAs she contacted required a minimum of $20 million in assets under management. But as someone just starting, she didn’t yet have any assets to manage. Through professional networking she connected with the chief executive at an RIA who agreed to take her on, even without the minimum.
The best model is likely to be highly individual — dependent on the CPA’s business goals. Benson has seen professional peers build everything from lean but profitable one-person firms to investment management–heavy firms with large staffs.
“There’s no one right answer to how you build a financial planning practice,” Benson said.
Many CPAs leave tax compliance services behind once they shift fully into financial planning. Others, like Smith, continue to offer it as part of their services.
RELATIONSHIPS ARE PRIMARY
Adding financial planning services to an existing accounting practice can seem daunting — new skills to learn, new regulations to manage, and a new business to grow.
But the AICPA’s PFP Section provides a community of other CPAs who have made the shift, plus conferences, continuing education, and networking opportunities. The advice of a peer who has already done it can be invaluable. The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors and the CFP Board are other options for information.
“I think you can learn a lot just from hearing, seeing different approaches,” Benson said. “Don’t feel like there’s one answer that has to be the way to go.”
For CPAs getting into financial planning, Tillery says the PFP Section is the perfect place to start: “Start getting immersed in the section, the ENGAGE conference, the people. If you can find a group that will mentor and study with you, that helps incredibly.”
The following licenses and credentials are required depending on the personal financial services provided:
- Series 65 (Uniform Investment Adviser Law Exam): Passing this exam allows you to register as an investment adviser representative (IAR). State-registered IAR status qualifies you to charge fees for investment advice.
- Series 7 (general securities representative): This U.S. license qualifies you to sell securities such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
- Series 66: When paired with a Series 7 license, it qualifies you to execute trades and provide investment advice.
- State insurance license: Issued by individual states, this license is required to sell insurance and annuity products and qualifies you as an insurance broker.
- Certified Financial Planner (CFP): This credential requires a comprehensive exam and up to 6,000 hours of experience. It covers tax strategies and investment, retirement, insurance, and estate planning.
- Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC): This typically requires eight college-level courses and three years of experience. Often used alongside the CFP credential, it qualifies you to provide retirement; income tax; estate planning; insurance and risk management; and investment advice.
- Personal Financial Specialist (PFS): This CPA-exclusive credential integrates tax and financial planning and may substitute for Series 65.
- Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA): This credential requires three exams and about 4,000 hours of experience. The credential focuses on investment analysis and portfolio management.
About the author
Mark Tosczak, MBA, is a freelance writer based in North Carolina. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Jeff Drew at [email protected].
LEARNING RESOURCES
Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning
A broad spectrum of personal financial planning topics covered in a short, examples-based course.
CPE SELF-STUDY
Personal Financial Planning Process
Covers elements of the overall planning process, including gathering data, establishment of financial objectives, and identification of constraints.
CPE SELF-STUDY
Personal Financial Planning Certificate Program
A series of certificates covering the core areas of PFP, including retirement, estate, risk management, and investment planning, as well as practical application of knowledge. Completing all five certificates fulfills the education requirement to obtain the highly coveted PFS credential.
CERTIFICATE PROGRAM
AICPA Personal Financial Planning Symposium
An exclusive gathering of top CPA financial planners and other financial planning professionals. Dive deep into estate, tax, and retirement strategies while engaging in high-level discussions. Led by experts for experts, it is insightful, interactive, and practice changing.
Jan. 25–27, JW Marriott, Nashville, Tenn.
CONFERENCE
Personal financial planning and tax will be on the agenda at the biggest event in the accounting profession.
June 7–10, 2027, Aria Resort & Casino, Las Vegas
CONFERENCE
The Personal Financial Planning (PFP) Section is an add-on membership section within the AICPA that provides an unparalleled package of resources designed specifically to support and promote CPA financial planners and their client relationships. For more information, click on the PFP Section membership headline above.
SECTION
For more information or to make a purchase, go to aicpa-cima.com/cpe-learning or call 888-777-7077.
MEMBER RESOURCES
Engage365 Communities
US Financial Planning and Tax Advisory Services
This Engage365 community provides CPAs in personal financial planning a place to connect, share information, and access AICPA resources. Check it out.
Articles
“Most Retirees Worry About Savings — But Few Use Financial Advisers,” JofA, June 1, 2026
“How CPAs Can Guide Better Retirement Choices,” JofA, May 20, 2026
“Managing CPA Liability in the Great Wealth Transfer,” JofA, May 1, 2026
Websites
