Tax Tech Horizons: $80k Found Money & The Future of Wealth Management
Fresh insights on navigating regulated markets, vertical AI, and the evolving fintech landscape
Hey everyone!
Coming off some fascinating conversations and pilot programs these past few weeks, I wanted to share emerging patterns I'm seeing in tax tech, wealth management, and vertical SaaS. The insights here come from hands-on work with leading wealth management firms, conversations with emerging AI companies, and our product development journey.
The Evolution of Tax Tech Integration
Our work with a major financial services company's pilot program revealed something fascinating about data integration in wealth management: what started as a simple verification tool is evolving into a comprehensive planning solution. Financial advisors aren't just looking for raw data - they need contextualized insights that help them understand client portfolios holistically.
Key insight: The ability to continuously monitor and update tax information could transform how advisors serve high-net-worth clients, especially when dealing with complex structures like trusts and business entities.
Why Vertical AI is Winning
Recent partnerships and pilots have reinforced a clear trend: domain-specific AI solutions are outperforming general-purpose tools. When we pivoted from broad tax information access to focused Schedule C automation and now business tax automation, as well as tech-enabled tax services the value proposition became immediately clearer for us and our partners and how we want to present our offerings.
The most successful implementations we're seeing share three characteristics:
Deep domain expertise in regulatory requirements
Focused scope with clear ROI
Integration with existing workflows rather than disruption (the health of CPAs + engineers with the Bench.co breakdown)
Practical Insights from the Field
Our recent pilot with a major financial institution has yielded some surprising learnings about the potential enterprise adoption of AI tools:
The IRS's current 3-4 week delivery times are pushing firms toward more automated solutions — we are typically hitting same-day or next-day data delivery with a Claude-powered tool to help expedite the process of 1) accessing proprietary tax information on businesses and 2) analyzing what can be large records to find unique insights specific to each business needs and optimizations.
Financial advisors are willing to pay more for tools that give them time back for client relationships.
Trust and business tax returns are becoming increasingly important for comprehensive wealth management. This is the future and we plan to focus here because these are complicated problems to address.
What's Next in Tax Tech
I'm particularly excited about three emerging opportunities:
Integration of tax data with wealth management platforms — there feels like a large opportunity here not being solved by the standard offerings.
Automated compliance monitoring for high-net-worth individuals — Products like Kubera feel like they are only scrapping the service of real-time tracking of compliance management across multiple asset classes, government agencies, etc.
The convergence of CPA services with wealth management offerings — as CPAs dwindle, there is a growing need to pair these experiences in an ‘I scratch your back, you scratch my back’ relationship. Currently, these are tricky, in the next 3-5 years they will become paramount and expected.
While large companies chase AI efficiency, we're already using it to find hidden money. By directly interfacing with the IRS, we recently helped a startup recover $80,000 in unclaimed refunds sent to old addresses - a common issue during rapid growth. Our IRS verification uncovers these opportunities in 24 hours, with no complex technology required. See if your business has unclaimed funds
Looking Forward
We're at an interesting inflection point where the technical capabilities of AI are meeting the practical needs of regulated industries. The winners won't necessarily be those with the most advanced technology, but those who can package it in ways that solve real business problems.
What trends are you seeing in your corner of the industry? Hit reply – I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Until next week,
Matthew
P.S. We're piloting some new features for clients handling 40+ returns or more. If you're interested in early access, reply with "Early Access" and I'll add you to the waitlist.