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Big 4
Deloitte is cutting GLP-1 coverage for weight loss and raising health insurance costs for US staff [Business Insider]
Deloitte told staff in the document that the changes “reflect the hard trade-offs of today’s cost environment,” and that there was a need “for shared responsibility in a few specific places where it’s become untenable for Deloitte to carry the cost alone.”
AI
Tax exam top scorer faces AI glasses allegations [The Korea Herald]
Han Won-seok, who topped this year’s exam, detailed his preparation in a blog post, saying he scored 397.5 out of 400 in the first round, answering 159 of 160 multiple-choice questions correctly. He earned perfect scores in introductory tax law, introductory accounting and commercial law, and scored 97.5 in public finance.
The Hidden Costs of Delegating to AI [Harvard Business Review]
Nitin Nohria and Hélène Hannecart write:
Managers in many types of companies are trying to decide when, where, and how to deploy AI, and how the benefits and costs of those choices net out. To better understand the trade-offs involved, we examined what happened at several accounting firms as they began using AI to prepare tax returns. One of us (Nitin) is chair of Thrive Capital, whose subsidiary Thrive Holdings is an owner of Current, an accounting technology platform. That relationship allowed us to gain access to data at four accounting firms during the 2025–26 tax season. The data covered roughly 7,000 moderate-complexity individual and trust returns, including rental-property and K-1 income. The time savings and throughput gains are company-reported. Although Current reviewed factual descriptions in our research, it did not determine or influence our analysis or conclusions.
The AI Reality Check: KPMG’s Christian Peo on What Financial Leaders Need to Know Before Year-End [FEI]
Drawing on nearly 30 years as an auditor, national office partner and former SEC accounting fellow, Peo called AI a revolutionary technology for financial reporting. “If even a fraction of the AI promises come true in financial reporting, it will be revolutionary,” he said. He was equally clear that the change will take time and effort.
Digital Transformation in Accounting: Two-Thirds of Companies See the Greatest Need for Development in AI Skills [KPMG Germany]
“Efficiency in accounting does not come about through technology alone. AI expertise means more than just being able to operate an application: Employees must be able to assess whether a result is technically plausible, what data it is based on, and when an additional review is necessary,” said Axel Bachmann, Partner in Regulatory Advisory.
EY Survey: Data Gaps Are Stalling Enterprise AI in Tax and Finance [Futurum]
The EY 2026 Tax and Finance Operations Survey of 1,600 CFOs and senior leaders across 30 jurisdictions finds that AI ambition has dramatically outrun data infrastructure [1]. With 64% citing insufficient AI-ready data as their top barrier [1] and agentic AI expectations surging from 21% to 77% in a single year [1], the gap between aspiration and execution is widening fast.
Google Now Has Two of the Top AI Models for Accounting Work, DualEntry Benchmark Finds [Business Wire]
Google’s newly released Gemini 4 Carbon scored 88.1% on the DualEntry Accounting AI Benchmark, tying for second among 24 leading AI models tested. Google’s Gemini 4 Argon remains first at 91.1%. Carbon shares second place with Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.3 Flash and SpaceXAI’s Grok 4.7. It finished ahead of Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3.1 Pro at 86.1%, Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1 at 85.1%, and OpenAI’s best models, GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra, at 81.2%.
Meta Accountant Emphasizes AI Fluency in Financial Reporting [Bloomberg Tax]
Corporate accounting teams should understand how AI works so they can detect and guard against third-party technology going rogue and affecting their financial reporting, Meta Platforms Inc.’s top accountant told the SEC Monday. “As they impact your financial control environment — speaking as a preparer — if you and your accounting staff are not fluent in AI, you will not be able to detect the impacts,” Meta Chief Accounting Officer Aaron Anderson said.
Audit
Auditors want CFOs to show their AI work [CFO Brew]
On Oct. 22 at Campfire’s Basecamp summit in San Francisco, a panel of finance leaders discussed AI-enabled auditing and the importance of leaving a work trail—not only for the company but for its accountants—and how to make it transparent enough to satisfy the peskiest auditors.
KPMG to lose another auditor contract amid scandal [Accounting Times]
Following the loss of auditor contracts from ANZ, Macquarie Group, IAG, and Lendlease amid allegations of audit misconduct and misuse of confidential client information, Crown Resorts has confirmed that it is also pulling the plug on its audit contract with KPMG Australia. A Crown Resorts spokesperson told Accounting Times that “Crown is considering a change of external auditor in the normal cyclical course of business after six years of KPMG signing the accounts”.
Careers
Preparing for CPA Firm Partnership — What Future Owners Should Know [INSIDE Public Accounting podcast]
Making partner at a CPA firm changes what you earn, how you spend your time and what the firm expects from you. For accountants approaching that milestone, understanding the financial and leadership responsibilities of ownership is an important part of preparing for the transition.
SEC
AICPA supports SEC plan to recognize CPAs as accredited investors [Journal of Accountancy]
The AICPA voiced support in a comment letter for an SEC proposal that would allow CPAs by virtue of their credential to qualify as accredited investors. “The accredited investor framework is intended to identify individuals who possess sufficient financial sophistication to evaluate investment opportunities and risks without the protections associated with registered offerings,” the comment letter, dated Oct. 27, said. “CPAs satisfy that condition.”
