If you want to do retirement plan audits right, it’s hard to be doing much else. Many CPA firms treat retirement plan audits as very convenient summer work, but we have dedicated ourselves to the practice year round. Our team is not trying to master several different areas of accounting and auditing, instead they have focused in on one specific service.
While this decision has left us with a slower season during part of the year, we fill in the gaps by staying up to date with the latest changes to regulatory requirements, accounting/auditing standards, and industry developments. We develop training materials for our team and revise our audit programs to improve quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.
At Pension Assurance LLP, we believe in the power of focus. As a result, we shun other services, believing that the best way to provide value to our clients is to be singularly dedicated to one specialized service. With the Department of Labor (DOL) very actively reviewing auditor work in the area of employee benefit plan audits, it’s a full-time, year-round effort to stay current on the latest regulatory updates in order to perform work that is acceptable to the DOL.
Firm-Level Focus
Pension Assurance LLP was founded on the realization that even a dedicated practice within a larger firm will have its limitations. We created a firm that is 100 percent focused, at the firm level, on one thing – performing high quality and efficient retirement plan audits.
What does this mean to clients?
They always get our “A”-team. Larger practice areas, clients, or projects, don’t exist for us to need to reroute resources to.
They work with a team that knows what they’re doing. Many times in full-service accounting firms, “available” resources are shifted to lower-priority retirement plan audit work. And to many clients’ frustration, these are often the least experienced professionals with barely any general experience, let alone specialized experience auditing retirement plans.
They generally work with the same team each year. Over the years, we do shift teams but we always do so because we believe we can better serve clients that way. And we always make transitions with care.
Bottom line, specialized practices within larger full-service firms can’t match the focus a 100 percent dedicated firm can achieve. Firms and professionals that try to deliver in several practice areas each year can’t even come close. That’s the power of focus.
