Industry Insights: Professional Services Firms Shift Focus to Tech and Talent

At Oak Street Funding^® we recognize the importance of understanding our clients’ priorities and pain points so we can help them succeed. We recently completed surveys of our clients in the insurance, CPA, and RIA fields to find out what’s driving them in 2026.

The surveys showed that across professions, market expansion is the highest priority. The means for driving that expansion, however, has shifted from focusing primarily on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to deploying technological advances. Read on to learn how practices are addressing these new priorities to drive growth.

• ⚡2025 Industry Survey Results

  Our industry survey findings focus on these 3 areas:

  • • Talent acquisition
  • • Technology advances and AI utilization
  • • Growth through M&A

Survey Results

All three professions noted that their main pain point is talent acquisition, reflecting a years-long shortage of talent in the RIA, insurance, and CPA fields. Technology and AI (artificial intelligence) utilization ranked second for CPAs and third for insurance agents and RIAs. With RIAs, however, the issue of technology is more nuanced: their second-ranked concern was engaging clients across digital channels, which is both a technological and a human problem. As such, technology is involved in two of their top three pain points.

Differences emerged among the professions on the topic of digital transformation. While insurance agents and RIAs listed it as their third and fourth priorities, respectively, CPAs placed it in last (seventh) place. It appears that in all professions, but especially accounting, interest is more in deploying technology gradually rather than taking on a complete overhaul all at once.

While all three groups are prioritizing technological advances and AI utilization, there are notable differences within each profession on the rate of adoption. Roughly half of respondents report they are slowly but surely modernizing (52% for CPAs and 50% for RIAs and insurance professionals). RIAs have the highest percentage (44%) of respondents who are implementing change daily, followed by CPAs (38%) and insurance agents (32%). No RIAs reported that financial issues were holding them back from implementing technology, but 10% of CPAs and 8% of insurance professionals did

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Talent Acquisition

Talent shortages are a real concern in insurance, accounting, and wealth management. Firm owners can take a three-pronged approach to meeting their clients’ needs in this challenging environment:

• • Improved recruitment
    
    • • Building more robust relationships with universities to attract potential candidates while they’re still in school 
      • Promoting the social value of the work of their professions to appeal to service-minded younger candidates
      • Offering flexible work arrangements highly valued by GenZ and millennials

• • Increased retention
    
    • • Providing equity options earlier to promote loyalty and performanc
      • Offering expanded professional development opportunities to support career advancement
      • Maintaining competitive compensation

• • Wider use of technology
    
    • • Implementing AI for routine tasks so fewer professionals can serve more clients
      • Using technology to reduce workload and burnout, thus decreasing turnover
      • Promoting digital self-service options for clients to obtain information on their own

Technology Advances and AI Utilization

There are a myriad of use cases for technology in professional services. In insurance, AI can be used to assess risk and calculate premiums. In accounting, it has been used to write customized code to facilitate data analysis. It has also proved useful for automating parts of the audit process. In wealth management, AI can analyze market trends along with client preferences and make recommendations. It can also help manage risk and detect fraud.

These are just a few of the many uses for AI. Across all the professions, AI can be used for creating marketing content, drafting emails and other communications, and doing background research.

Growth through M&A

M&A remains a powerful tool for market expansion, and all three professions rank it as a priority. Not only can it increase a firm’s client base and geographical footprint, it can also help address firms’ technology and talent acquisition goals.

Acqui-hiring is an M&A strategy that originated with tech startups. In that setting the buyer wants to bring on the target’s talent, rather than its products or services. Interpreted more loosely, it can also be applied in the services fields, where one firm acquires another in order to absorb its team members who have key skills and talents.

A merger or acquisition can also be a time- and cost-effective way to upgrade a firm’s technology stack. It can be easier to buy a company that already has the technology a firm needs rather than build it from the ground up.

Moving Forward

Implementing these strategies often requires investment. Oak Street Funding can help with working capital loans that use a firm’s future cash flow as collateral. Contact us today to get started.