This interview originally appeared in Accountancy Vandaag.
The accountant's classic role is shifting. Digitalisation and AI are taking over more and more repetitive tasks, which frees up room for advice with greater added value. For Guillaume Desclée, founder and CEO of Abbove, an important opportunity lies in wealth planning. "Accountants already have the knowledge and the trust to guide entrepreneurs over the long term."
Processing receipts, preparing annual accounts, reporting figures: traditional accountancy work is becoming more and more automated. As a result, the accountant's added value shifts, according to Guillaume Desclée, towards a broader advisory role.
"The accountant knows the business, but also the entrepreneur's financial situation. That position is especially valuable once the conversation goes beyond the company's numbers. Think of succession and transfer planning, gifts, taxation, financial scenarios, or anticipating risks. For entrepreneurs, that isn't a luxury. A large part of their wealth is often tied up in their business. Sooner or later the question arises of how that business can be sold or transferred, and how the entrepreneur can turn the wealth they've built into financial security and future plans."
For Guillaume, this is an important opportunity for accountants. "They already have the knowledge, regular access to financial information, and a relationship of trust with their clients. With Abbove, we want to help them turn that existing, often informal advisory role into a structured and professional service."
A clear view of wealth
Abbove was born about nine years ago, out of conversations with some 120 wealthy families. What emerged was that complex estates are often hard to keep clear. Information sits scattered across documents, systems, and different advisors, while important decisions around ownership, transfer, and future planning are often poorly prepared.
"Our platform was first developed as a solution for families themselves," says Guillaume Desclée. "They then started sharing Abbove with their accountants, notaries, and other advisors. That led to the evolution towards a B2B2C model, where advisors use the platform with their own clients."
A major strength here is the collaborative approach. "Our advisors and clients work with the same structured information. We bring together, among other things, assets and liabilities, companies and holdings, ownership structures, family relationships, documents, cash flows, gifts, and future scenarios.
"The goal is for everyone to look at the same picture of the wealth. That information can then be shown as wealth overviews, organisational charts, ownership structures, financial reports, and scenario analyses. Other professional parties, such as notaries and family offices, can also consult or complete information within the relevant context. Our platform is also white-labelled and can be deployed across different jurisdictions."
From an advisory question to a concrete engagement
Abbove doesn't only want to centralise information, but also to help accountants offer advice in a structured way. A question like "How can I transfer my business to my children?" can, for example, be turned into a concrete advisory engagement.
"As an accountant, you can then record the objective, define an engagement, determine the work needed and the fee, work out different scenarios, and compare their consequences. An advisory report can then be drawn up, and you can also guide your client through the implementation. That makes wealth planning a clearly defined service, one that can find its place within the firm's business model."
AI is only as good as the data
A second major strength of Abbove is the combination of structured wealth data and AI. For Guillaume, artificial intelligence has little value when the underlying information is fragmented or unreliable.
"A Ferrari doesn't get far on bad fuel. The same goes for AI: without good data, you can't expect reliable, professional results. With Abbove, you can pull information from existing systems, think of CRM and accountancy tools, and so cut down on double data entry. Documents such as property deeds or bank statements can also be uploaded: AI extracts the relevant information and proposes it within the wealth structure. You check and validate that information before it is finally processed."
The time saved can be considerable, according to Guillaume. "Tasks that used to take days can be done in minutes. A document that had to be read manually for an hour can be analysed by AI in seconds, after which you check the results."
Advising proactively with AI
This combination of data and AI should ultimately also lead to a more proactive advisory role. "Within Abbove, we already have Mia, an AI assistant that can query documents, summarise reports, and prepare communication. The next step is for Mia to work with the full structured wealth database. You'll then be able to ask not only what a document says, but also which opportunities or risks are in play for a client."
So AI can help you draw up an agenda ahead of a client meeting, identify points of attention, or detect possible advisory engagements. You can also, for instance, check which clients may be dealing with a specific tax or wealth-law situation, and reach out to them about it proactively.
Technology, with the human at the wheel
Despite this far-reaching automation, the accountant remains indispensable, according to Guillaume. AI can gather and analyse information, but it doesn't automatically understand what a client personally cares about.
"The technically or financially optimal solution isn't necessarily the one the client wants. You have to listen, understand what matters to someone, and take their personal priorities into account. The strength of our approach lies, in my view, in the combination of technology and human expertise: structured wealth data, AI-supported analysis, professional oversight, and above all the relationship of trust between accountant and client."
For accountants, this is at the same time a commercial opportunity. "The biggest challenge isn't the technology, but deciding how an accountancy firm wants to position wealth planning, which services it wants to offer, and how it wants to price that service," Guillaume Desclée concludes. "The software isn't the hardest step. The real question is how your firm wants to organise its advisory offer."