Why an independent local accountant still beats the big groups

If you've been with the same accountancy firm for years, there's a fair chance something has changed recently. Perhaps a letter announced that your firm has "joined forces" with a national group. Perhaps the partner you always dealt with has moved on, the fees have crept up, or the person answering the phone changes every few months. You're not imagining it — the local accountancy landscape is consolidating, and clients are feeling it.

Key takeaways

• Accountancy practices across Kent and Medway are increasingly being acquired by national and private-equity-backed groups — it's a genuine trend, not an anecdote.
• Clients of acquired firms commonly report higher fees, less partner time and more standardised, target-driven service.
• An independent firm offers the same qualifications and technical depth — with decisions made locally by the people who actually know you.
• Independence means advice that looks at your whole picture — business, personal tax, property and family — rather than siloed billable services.
• Small doesn't mean limited: a good independent firm works with a network of trusted specialists for anything outside its core expertise.
• Switching accountants is routine and painless — professional clearance is a standard, well-mannered process between firms.

Why is this happening to local accountancy firms?

To be fair to everyone involved, there are understandable reasons firms sell. Partners approaching retirement need an exit. Regulation, technology and recruitment are genuinely harder for small practices than they were twenty years ago. And private equity has spotted that accountancy — with its loyal clients and recurring fees — is an attractive, dependable business to invest in. None of that is sinister, and many acquiring groups are run by capable, professional people.

But a change of ownership changes incentives. When a practice becomes part of a group, decisions about fees, staffing and service levels no longer sit with the person across the desk from you. Targets are set centrally. Efficiency usually means standardisation: fewer meetings, more portals, junior staff handling work a partner used to do. If you've felt that the relationship has become more transactional since your firm was taken over, that's usually why — the firm's first duty has quietly shifted from its clients to its investors.

What clients of acquired firms tend to notice

• Fees rise — often steadily, sometimes sharply, and the person who used to be able to flex them no longer can.
• Less senior time — the partner relationship becomes a manager relationship, then a "client service team".
• Advice becomes reactive — compliance gets done, but nobody rings you up before the tax year end with an idea.
• Services become siloed — your company accounts, personal tax and property questions are handled by different departments who don't talk to each other.
• Staff turnover — you explain your business from scratch to someone new, again.

None of this makes anyone a villain. It's simply what happens when service is designed around group economics rather than individual clients. The question is whether it's what you want from your accountant.

The independent difference: what we can do that a group can't

Same expertise — different incentives

Independence has nothing to do with capability. An ICAEW Chartered Accountant in an independent Rochester practice passed the same exams, follows the same professional standards and keeps up with the same tax legislation as anyone at a national firm. Many of us trained in larger firms before choosing independence precisely so we could practise the way we believe accountancy should be done. What differs is not the technical knowledge — it's who the advice is designed to serve.

Decisions made locally, by people who know you

In an independent firm, the person who sets your fee, plans your work and picks up the phone when something goes wrong is the same person who knows your business, your family and your history. There is no head office to refer to, no group pricing matrix, no utilisation target shaping how much time you're worth. If your year has been difficult and the fee needs a conversation, you have that conversation with a decision-maker — not a ticket queue.

Advice that looks at the whole picture

Most clients' finances don't come in neat departmental boxes. The director's salary question is also a pension question; the buy-to-let question is also an inheritance question; the business sale is also a family conversation. Because an independent firm isn't organised into siloed billable service lines, one adviser can look across your company, your personal tax, your property and your family's position and join the dots. That's where the real value in accountancy usually lives — in the gaps between the boxes.

Time actually spent with clients

When nobody is measuring you against a group utilisation target, you can spend an hour with a client because the client needs an hour. You can ring someone before the tax year end because you've spotted an opportunity, not because a cross-selling campaign told you to. Proactive advice isn't a premium add-on in an independent practice — it's the point of the job.

"But can a small firm handle everything?" — the specialist network

It's a reasonable question, and the honest answer is that no firm of any size knows everything. The difference is how they respond. Big groups keep work in-house because that's where the revenue goes. A good independent firm has spent years building a network of trusted specialists — in areas like R&D claims, complex VAT, trusts and estates, corporate finance, legal work and financial planning — and brings in exactly the right one when your situation calls for it, while staying at the centre as the adviser who knows your whole picture.

So whatever the question or challenge — a company sale, an HMRC enquiry, a property restructure, a family succession plan — it can be faced. Being small means the firm's own overheads stay low and its advice stays personal. It does not mean you've hired a firm with limits.

My accountant has been taken over — what should I do?

First: don't panic, and don't feel disloyal for asking questions. Your engagement is with the firm, and the firm has changed. It's entirely reasonable to take stock. Watch for these over the following year:

• Fee increases that arrive as announcements rather than conversations.
• Your usual contact leaving, or becoming harder to reach.
• Work being moved to a central or offshore processing team.
• Proactive contact drying up — no planning conversations, just deadline reminders.
• New services being sold to you that nobody used to think you needed.

And ask direct questions: Who will actually do my work now? Who sets my fee, and how will it change? Will I still deal with the same person next year? A good firm — group-owned or not — will answer plainly. Evasive answers are themselves an answer.

How switching accountants works (it's easier than you think)

Many people stay with a firm they're unhappy with because they assume moving is complicated. It isn't. Switching accountants is one of the most routine, well-mannered processes in professional life:

1. You choose your new accountant and sign their engagement letter.
2. The new firm writes to the old one requesting "professional clearance" — a standard courtesy letter asking whether there's any reason they shouldn't act, and for copies of your records.
3. The old firm hands over your accounts, tax computations and other information. Professional standards oblige them to cooperate, and in practice virtually all firms do so promptly and politely.
4. The new firm registers as your agent with HMRC and picks up where the old one left off.

You don't need to have an awkward confrontation — a short email to your old firm is enough, and your new accountant handles the rest. The best time to switch is shortly after a year end or tax return has been filed, but a good firm can take you on at any point in the cycle.

Independent, local and here to stay

Professional Trust Group is an independent, ICAEW Chartered firm in Rochester, serving owner-managed businesses, landlords, professionals and families across Medway and Kent. We're not for sale to a consolidator, our decisions are made in Rochester, and the people you meet at the start of the relationship are the people you'll deal with for years. If your accountant has recently been taken over — or if you simply want to know what a genuinely personal service looks like — we'd be glad to meet you.

It costs nothing to compare. Book a free intro consultation — a relaxed, no-obligation conversation about your situation and how we'd look after you — or see our accountants in Rochester and small business accountants in Kent pages to find out more about how we work.