Joe Damiano has a warning for accountants who spend their days staring at tax returns: The clock is running.
“I say this to the partners all the time: If all you do is sit in front of your computer screen and review tax returns or review financial statements, in three to five years, you will not have a job,” he said. “You will not be at the firm.”
He didn’t soften it.
“You have to evolve; you have to do more than just what you have done for the last 30 years,” he said. “It’s change. It’s not my fault. It’s the world, and this is where things are going.”
Straight talk
Two longtime New Jersey CEOs, Ira Robbins of Valley Bank and Joe Damiano of Sax, were candid — and blunt — on key issues in the workplace during recent SAX Symposium. Here are their thoughts:
- Part 1: On cleaning house — and why loyalty can’t stop change
- Part 2: On private equity, growth — and keeping your culture in the process
- Part 3: On AI — what it will replace and what it can’t
Damiano, CEO and Managing Partner of SAX, and Ira Robbins, Chairman and CEO of Valley Bank, are longtime friends who each spent decades rising through the ranks before taking the top job.
They spoke on the keynote panel, “Leading Without a Playbook,” at the SAX Symposium, held late last month at MetLife Stadium.
Both CEOs said AI will take over much of the work their people do now. Neither thinks it will replace the part that matters most.
This is the last of a three-part series on what they had to say.
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Damiano said the routine work, the kind that eats up an accountant’s day, is exactly what AI will absorb.
“AI is not going away. We need to continue to lean in on AI and understand what it means,” he said. “And the firms that won’t be around in the future will be the firms that don’t embrace AI.”
The upside, he said, is time. Hours that used to go to reviewing returns can go to clients. SAX’s goal is to be its clients’ “number one advisor,” and AI should help get it there.
That also means one of the profession’s oldest excuses is about to disappear.
“Historically, you’ve always heard, ‘Oh, I’m too busy. I’m reviewing tax returns. I got tax season,’” he said. “The reality is, you won’t have that anymore as an excuse.”
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At Valley, the shift is already paying off.
“It’s real,” Robbins said.
He said the bank has about 500 AI use cases in place. This year, it has saved about $18 million on a $5 million investment. AI agents are already making outbound calls.
He expects much bigger changes ahead.
“I think AI is going to change, without question, 60, 70% of how we do things,” he said. “But it’s going to enhance the human relationships of what we’re able to do and make all of our people that much more impactful and be so much better relationship managers.”
