CliftonLarsonAllen has been building its international network since starting it last year in the U.K. and Ireland, with further expansion plans to other parts of the world as it begins to roll out artificial intelligence technology that it’s calling CLA GPT.
The Top 10 Firm announced in June 2022 the formation of CLA Global Limited in collaboration with Evelyn Partners, a U.K.-based wealth management group (see story). “We just crossed the one-year mark in July of having the CLA Global network, and we are already a top 15 network,” said CLA CEO Jen Leary. “I think we can get to the top 10 In the next 12 months. Today we are celebrating the fact that we have 13 network firms in various countries. The organization was co-founded by our member firm in the U.K., as well as the U.S. Those were good table stakes. Then right after that we brought in CLA Global Asia, based primarily in Singapore, but with reach through Southeast Asia. Most recently, we were able to bring in Mexico, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, India and Slovakia, and that’s just the first 15 months.”
CLA had prior relationships with most of the firms that have joined the network, but at least three are new to CLA, with their interest driven by news articles and press releases online about the network.
“People know there’s other options out there, so if we’re like-minded in our strategy, there will be a reason to have a phone call,” said Leary. “CLA Global believes that our strategy should be as much people led as client led. What’s unique about what we’re building is we’re going to have one of the strongest mobility practices in the country, meaning if you all want to live overseas, we want to be able to help you do that, and/or if you would prefer to live here in New York, but you want to have more of that global experience, we’re going to find ways to build virtual belonging communities. We see the megatrend, like everybody else does, which is globalization. The world is getting smaller, so let’s try to figure out how to just connect people.”
Some of the firms that have joined have come from other networks like Nexia International, where CLA and its predecessor firms had been a member for 13 years. A Singapore-based firm that was formerly called Nexia TS rebranded as CLA Global TS last November, and others have joined after being part of smaller networks. CLA is looking to expand the network to some specific countries.
“What was different about our strategy than other networks we’ve been a part of is that we don’t want to be in every single country,” said Leary. “We don’t have a need for that. We are really tracking where our clients and our people are, and where do they want us to be? So rather than in 185 or 200 countries, we’ll probably be in 50. We have a list where we are looking at these are the countries we need to be in. We track foreign direct investment between those respective countries to say where do we need to be today and where do we need to be tomorrow?”
One firm in the U.S. is also planning to join the CLA Global network before the end of the year without actually being merged into CLA.
“I believe CLA Global can be a conduit to help some of these smaller mid-market firms stay relevant,” said Leary.
She envisions licensing some of CLA’s technology to the smaller firms in the network and helping them with services they may not be able to do themselves, such as cost segregation studies.
One of the technologies that CLA has been developing is artificial intelligence, using technology similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“Part of our dream is just to democratize AI for everyone,” said Leary. “We’ve got great partnerships with Microsoft, so we have some amazing pilots going on. We’re building our own large language models. We have CLA GPT already involved in-house in a closed system. What we’re figuring out is how do you take those relationships to those small to medium organizations, the towns and universities that might not otherwise have access to them. These are multimillion-dollar contracts with big vendors.”
CLA GPT is in a closed environment that’s private and effectively roped off from the ChatGPT used by the public. “It’s not like ChatGPT 3.5 or 4.0, but it is our own,” said Leary. “We have data scientists and data engineers, and we built this large language model at the first level, which we released this summer. Just recently, we started building it out more, adding in our audit manual and our tax manual. The idea is that when you come to our intranet and ask, ‘Who’s our vendor for dental insurance? Or who do I need to do the second review of this international tax form?’ in CLA GPT, you just type it in and you prompt it.”
The firm may begin offering CLA GPT outside the firm to clients next year as part of what it’s tentatively calling CLA Intelligence Suite, but that’s still in development.
“We’re really excited to be moving into 2024, which will be another strong year for us,” said Leary.
She noted that CLA became a brand in 2012 after the merger of Clifton Gunderson and LarsonAllen. At that time, the combined firm had 3,200 people, 90 locations and half a billion dollars in revenue. “This year, we will finish the year with almost 9,000 people, $2 billion in revenue, and 130 locations and a global network,” said Leary. “That has been an amazing run for us over the last 11 or 12 years, and we will continue that over the next decade.”
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