There are dozens of paths to growth, and the leading firms in the accounting profession are taking all of them.
Over the past decade or so, the Top 100 Firms have mapped out a host of different ways to grow their practices, and combined them into a veritable atlas of strategies, all of which they follow in pursuit of bigger bottom lines.
North Carolina-based Cherry Bekaert's strategic plan for 2026, as relayed by CEO Michelle Thompson, touches on many of the most common routes: "Our growth strategy focuses on expanding advisory services, accelerating through strategic M&A, and deepening our position as a digitally driven, industry-aligned advisor to the middle market. A key pillar is our 'Trusted Advisor' initiative, which is designed to strengthen client relationships through account prioritization, structured account planning, and consistent experience standards," she explained. "This initiative is not a checkbox exercise. It's about driving real behavior change across the firm to improve cross-selling and elevate client engagement."
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Doubling down on advisory services, M&A and technology have all been well-traveled paths in the recent past, and will remain so for many of this year's leading firms — but it's Thompson's final element that is really standing out in 2026, with many of the T100 aiming to grow by focusing on finding better clients and building stronger, deeper, more effective relationships with them.
The year of the client
That intense focus on clients can take many forms, starting as an overarching vision.
"Aprio's 2026 growth strategy is client-centric and grounded in a simple principle: We are growing so our clients can grow, too," said Richard Kopelman, CEO of the Georgia-based firm. "Every strategic decision we make is designed to help clients navigate complexity, move faster, and unlock greater opportunity in an increasingly dynamic business environment."
One example of how that principle plays out on the ground is the legal practice that Aprio launched in 2025, and continues to grow: "The expansion of Aprio Legal remains a client-centered priority as businesses increasingly face intertwined legal, tax, operational and financial decisions that cannot be solved in silos," Kopelman said. "By further integrating legal services with tax, advisory and wealth planning, we are simplifying how clients access coordinated guidance across the full business life cycle."
A key aspect of the client-centric growth strategy that many of the Top 100 are following this year involves identifying the right clients — and curating the right services for them. "Our strategy centers on intentional client selection and developing solutions that address our clients' evolving needs," said Ed Monborne, CEO of Pennsylvania-based RKL. "By proactively reviewing our service mix and portfolio, we aim to align our capabilities with emerging market demands, ensuring sustained, client-focused expansion."
Another crucial element, of course, is client service and the client experience, with the T100 polishing up everything from onboarding and service delivery to pricing and beyond.
At California-based Sensiba, "We're optimizing the full client journey to eliminate friction points and enhance client experience by owning our end-to-end value chain," said partner and chief growth officer Nick Lew Ton. "We're enhancing end-to-end client experience to reduce time-to-impact, leveraging our first-in-class IT and AI solutions to deliver a unified experience across all touchpoints. Our focus is on understanding and anticipating client needs at every stage of their journey."
Going to market
Of course, you can only laser-focus on serving clients if you have clients in the first place, which leads us to another standout growth strategy for 2026: rethinking marketing and business development at every level.
"Our growth strategy for 2026 is focused on being more intentional in how we go to market," reported Avani Desai, CEO of Schellman. "We will continue to expand our go-to-market and marketing teams and sharpen how we tell our story across the market." This will prove crucial as the Florida-based firm aims to expand beyond its traditional business-to-business focus into sectors with more of a consumer focus, like health care and financial services.
"We are also focused on modernizing how we go to market," echoed Colin Kendall, chief marketing officer of Maryland-based SC&H. "This year, we are in the midst of a comprehensive rebuild of our CRM and sales processes to better align marketing, business development, and service delivery. The objective is to create clearer visibility into pipeline and performance, improve how insights are shared across teams, and support a more proactive, consistent approach to client engagement — particularly across complex, multiservice relationships."
Besides building stronger marketing and business development teams, many of the Top 100 are leveraging new technology to help turbocharge their efforts. "2026 will be the first full year of implementation for several new AI-enabled tech tools that will support our sales, marketing, and business development initiatives," explained Heidi Pelczar, chief operating officer of Philadelphia-based Your Part-Time Controller. "We are being more intentional this year in targeting potential clients at the intersection of geography and the nonprofit subsector to demonstrate that we not only understand the challenges and opportunities of the regions in which they operate, but that we also understand the specific pain points of running their specific type of nonprofit."
"We're also investing in CRM and marketing technology integration to enhance lead generation and client experience, while aligning marketing and business development priorities with service line and industry goals," said Cherry Bekaert's Thompson. "These efforts, combined with targeted capability-building and resource optimization, position us to deliver a seamless, one-firm experience and reinforce our reputation as a trusted partner for CFOs of midmarket companies."
Know thyself
Specific growth tactics are always important, but some of this year's Top 100 Firms also take a more holistic view, basing growth around an understanding of their firm's individual structure.
"Our growth strategy is continually grounded in our employee ownership model, which aligns our firm's performance with client service. Since transitioning to an ESOP in 2023, we have emphasized organic growth driven by client satisfaction and repeat engagement," said Louis Grassi, CEO of New York-based Grassi. "This approach is enabled by an ownership culture that encourages employees to think like owners, contribute ideas, and develop practical solutions tailored to client needs. Looking ahead, we will continue to add new professionals, partners and firms that share our client-focused philosophy and commitment to quality."
Nebraska-based Lutz, meanwhile, is relying on an almost-Socratic approach: "In 2026, Lutz will advance accountability and operational clarity through refined governance processes, enhanced reporting and KPI visibility, and continued development of leadership depth across the firm," said managing shareholder Ryan Cook. "A key enabler of this work is … a multiphase modernization of the firm's proprietary practice management platform. By migrating to a cloud-based environment and enhancing dashboards, reporting, and cross-division visibility, Lutz is increasing collaboration and data-driven decision-making while supporting disciplined growth and long-term continuity."
The usual suspects
The fact that the Top 100 are taking an unusual interest in their client relationships and their go-to-market strategies doesn't mean they are ignoring all the other paths to growth — far from it. As they have over the past several years, they are leveraging technology (particularly artificial intelligence), shifting to an ever-greater focus on advisory services, seeking out merger and acquisition partners and other opportunities for geographic expansion, and making every effort to recruit, retain and develop top talent at their firms.
Many of those strategies interact and boost each other — using new technologies to support more innovative advisory services, for instance, or to free up staff to focus on work that's more interesting to them — and this year a number of firms plan to use them to serve their primary goal of happier clients.
1. AI, automation and technology. Using technology to operate more effectively and efficiently has been important to the T100 for several years now, helping them weather the worst of the talent shortages, and the rise of AI is only accelerating this.
The same tools are also serving other purposes, though. At Georgia-based Bennett Thrasher, for instance, "We are leaning into technology, automation and AI to help our professionals shift away from lower-level compliance work and move into more consultative, advisory roles earlier in their careers," said CEO and managing partner Jeff Call. "This combination positions us for sustainable growth without sacrificing our independence or culture."
Firms of all sizes are similarly leaning into artificial intelligences of all kinds. Among the 15 billion-dollar firms at the top of the list, billion-dollar investments in agentic AI and internal deployments of ChatGPT-style tools are fairly common, and firms of all sizes in the T100 are exploring this rapidly changing field, bringing in AI expertise or standing up internal committees and working groups to make sure they get the most out of it.
And on those lines, some firms are studying AI as both a service opportunity and a major factor in economic change: "Our growth strategy is to continue to lead at the intersection of the venture ecosystem and the AI economy," said Michael Rewkiewicz, managing partner of California-based Frank, Rimerman + Co. "In an AI-, technology-, and capital flow–driven environment, the cycle between investors, founders and companies is shorter and faster, reshaping how capital is deployed and how businesses are built and scaled. As AI changes both venture investing and day-to-day company operations, we partner with venture firms, founders and executive teams across the full life cycle — from formation through scale, liquidity events, and beyond — providing the financial infrastructure, tax strategy and governance required to operate at speed. By scaling alongside our clients, we deepen our influence across the innovation economy and help set the standard for modern advisory."
2. Advisory services. The leading firms in the profession have been prioritizing a shift from a focus on compliance work to a focus on advisory for several years now, and that will continue in 2026, with the T100 expanding and deepening their advisory offerings, and seeking out hot new services.
Even in this area, though, some firms are bringing a client focus this year — one that will also have ramifications for talent. "Our clients value holistic advisory services over purely compliance-based support," explained RKL's Monborne. "With that in mind, we are committed to embedding an advisory mindset throughout the firm. This includes comprehensive training programs to equip our workforce as best-in-class advisors and strengthening our dedicated client success function to nurture relationships and deliver exceptional client experiences."
3. M&A and geographic expansion. Of all the strategies for growth, mergers and acquisitions are probably the oldest, and the most commonly employed, among the Top 100. And with private equity money flooding into the profession, there's little chance of that changing anytime soon.
"With the backing of New Mountain Capital and an evolved capital structure, we see an acceleration of merger & acquisition activity to enter new geographies and deepen the advisory capabilities to serve new and existing clients," said Kurt Gresens, CEO of Wisconsin-based Wipfli Advisory.
With an ever-growing proportion of the Top 100 Firms taking on PE investment — all five of the new firms on the list this year had outside investors — that means more money sloshing around the profession, driving up multiples and the cost of further acquisitions.
That may be one of the reasons that so many of this year's Top 100, while not eschewing M&A at all, reported that they intend to take approaches that are more balanced, more careful, or both.
"Doeren Mayhew's 2026 strategic priorities are centered on disciplined, fast-paced inorganic growth while market conditions remain favorable," reported CEO Chad Anschuetz, whose Michigan-based firm acquired 15 others in the past 12 months. "We intend to continue investing aggressively in our existing hubs, expand into new geographic markets, and add scale and expertise where it matters most."
At Georgia-based Mauldin & Jenkins, meanwhile, "Our strategies are a balance of M&A and organic growth," said COO Kristen Lord. "We are not currently looking to add any new geography to our footprint in the next 12 months, but we are always looking for in-market opportunities with established firms or advisory services that will complement our existing lineup."
Finally, geographic expansion often overlaps with M&A for the T100 as a way to round out markets and seek out new talent, but Tennessee-based HHM CPAs actually uses talent to point the way: "Our geographic expansion remains rooted in following our partners and teams into markets where they want to live and work. Over the past several years, this approach led to expansion into Memphis, Cleveland and Pensacola," said partner Travis Horton. "Building on that momentum, a Chattanooga partner's relocation to Pensacola in early 2025 has helped accelerate growth and leadership presence in the market, and in 2026 we will further solidify our commitment with the opening of our new downtown Pensacola office."
4. Talent. Last, but certainly not least, the Top 100 Firms continue to make major investments in how they attract and treat their staff. From hiring in-house recruiters to offering leadership and skill development opportunities, competitive compensation and perks, they take staffing issues very seriously.
Once again, though, there is a connection to their refreshed focus on clients. As YPTC's Pelczar put it, "Because we know client retention is directly related to staff retention, we are confident that if we keep our staff happy, they will keep our clients happy."
Firms are also highlighting the relationship between developing staff and the move to advisory: "Our clients value holistic advisory services over purely compliance-based support," said RKL's Monborne. "With that in mind, we are committed to embedding an advisory mindset throughout the firm. This includes comprehensive training programs to equip our workforce as best-in-class advisors, and strengthening our dedicated client success function to nurture relationships and deliver exceptional client experiences."
One last development in the talent arena may be a result of increased automation and the growing reliance on outsourcing: As those reduce the need for entry-level staff to do grunt work, the T100 are prioritizing lateral hires.
"We will focus on hiring lateral talent and partners who bring specialized experience and strong client relationships, ensuring we maintain a competitive edge," said Nathen McEown, CEO of Texas-based Whitley Penn.
