Turning M&A Growth Into a Strength (Not a Risk) for Larger Accounting Groups
The pace of consolidation in the accounting sector continues to accelerate, driven by landmark deals such as AAB’s recent investment in Kreston Reeves. This type of transformational acquisition remains one of the fastest ways for accounting groups to grow. Highlighting the scale, ambition, and complexity facing modern accounting groups as they grow through M&A. But achieving scale is only valuable if firms can integrate newly acquired practices smoothly.
Too often, accounting consolidators acquire great firms but fail to maximise their potential due to inconsistent processes, disconnected systems, and limited cross‑firm visibility. Each acquired practice continues operating in its own way, creating operational fragmentation that slows growth and increases risk.
The real value in M&A comes not from the deal itself but from what happens after: how quickly the acquiring group can integrate people, clients, processes, and data.
This is where unified technology becomes essential. A central client management platform ensures that every new firm joins the same ecosystem of onboarding workflows, pipeline stages, templates, and data structures. Instead of reinventing processes with each acquisition, the group benefits from a repeatable integration methodology.
A recent example is TC Group – an Accountancy Age Top 20 firm with more than 1,500 people across 60 offices – which partnered with FibreCRM to deploy a sector‑first, enterprise‑wide CRM and onboarding solution. The implementation unified CRM, onboarding, KYC, AML and compliance workflows into a single, synchronised system.
FibreCRM is designed specifically for environments like this. It allows accounting consolidators to bring new acquisitions online rapidly, aligning them with group‑wide standards in onboarding, communication, proposal generation, risk management, and opportunity tracking. Leadership gains instant visibility across all acquired firms, enabling better cross‑selling, resource utilisation, and performance management.
The TC Group deployment showcases what’s possible: a fully integrated CRM in under six months, delivering real‑time visibility, data consistency, and a scalable foundation that supports future acquisitions.
With proper systems, M&A becomes a growth catalyst, not a bottleneck.
