Market voices: Adapting
Lee Bell
President Saltmarsh, Cleaveland and Gund
Many of our service offerings are consultative in nature, and they were developed in response to fit what legislative compliance has presented to our clients. Our business, no matter how we describe it, is compliance-driven. The way we distinguish ourselves is through the level of consultation in which we wrap that compliance. Our clients need us to deal with the regulators. Those that require compliance select us because we are providing deeper insights and service, more than they can get from another provider. That ability to provide more has increased in the last several months. Our people are more comfortable in providing more because they have more time to do so. Less travel means more time to be able to communicate directly with clients.
Risk assurance continues to be a huge piece of our growth, especially in the Tampa Bay area. Our risk assurance professionals are working at a national level with companies all over the country. It is not ideal to be doing it from a remote location but, between our professional staff and the staff of the clients we work with, people have adapted and continue to do the work. Our business has grown and we are highly cognizant that we are fortunate in that respect. In fact, the topic of risk is more on the minds of our clients and marketplace than ever as a result of increased dependence on technology and systems.
Richard Huckaby
Office Managing Member Warren Averett
Office Managing Partner Marcum LLP
We got really involved in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), becoming serious advisers. We spent a lot of time forming a firm-wide team of experts, produced a lot of content and we were able to generate new opportunities from companies all over the country, not just in Tampa. Our transaction advisory group probably slowed down a little bit compared to the last three years because a lot of deals were put on hold, although some still had solid growth. Our wealth management practice, focused on investing assets for our clients, had its best year in history.
In our advisory space, we were able to find new services in certain areas. One was around the Paycheck Protection Program, helping to consult around the introduction and now with the forgiveness of the program. Cybersecurity has been an increased risk, with companies trying to go from their offices to a remote format and having a lot more shops to keep safe. Another area that’s been interesting for us is data analytics, specifically around COVID. Our data science and data analytics team was engaged by our executive team to track the trends and build out data tools as we were contemplating which offices we could open and when. That was so successful that we were able to turn it into a service offering as well, where we were helping companies manage their own reopening process.
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Dan Dowell
| Invest: Tampa Bay 2021 | PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Adam Thomas
Managing Partner Tampa Dixon Hughes Goodman