Talent is top of mind for many accounting and finance organizations as they gear up for 2025. The shortage of qualified accounting talent is “approaching crisis levels,” according to a recent EY survey, and organizations of all sorts are seeing the impact on everything from public filings to reporting accuracy.

Susan Coffey, CEO of public accounting at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), is leading the AICPA’s effort to address the accounting pipeline shortage. She recently spoke with CFO Brew about how the accounting profession is changing, the skills that new accountants need to succeed in this new environment, and talent mistakes she sees organizations making.

This is part one of a two-part series on the talent pipeline in 2025. To read part two, click here. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How does this kind of landscape change the skill set that new accounting talent needs?

I think it means that we need to focus education and experience and training much earlier, on those competencies that are going to be most important for the firms, depending on what services they’re offering.

You know, higher level skills like strategic planning and data analysis. Communications and ethical behavior and technology adeptness…less about the “What is the debit and the credit?” and more about “What does the analysis look like?”

For more talent management strategies, click here.—DA

The SEC just released its version of a Christmas letter, outlining its accomplishments for the year. And let’s just say, though your little cousin may have made the honor roll, unless he prosecuted a multibillion-dollar crypto fraud, he’s got nothing on Gensler & Co.

In fiscal year 2024, the SEC levied $8.2 billion in “financial remedies,” the highest amount in its history. More than half was related to its April jury trial win over crypto company Terraform Labs. The SEC found that Terraform lied to investors about the strength of its crypto asset, UST, and the company and its founder, Do Kwon, agreed to pay more than $4.5 billion in penalties.

The SEC undertook 583 enforcement actions in FY 2024, 26% fewer than in FY 2023. It received more than 45,000 tips and referrals, the highest amount in its history, around 24,000 of which were whistleblower tips. (Interestingly, the SEC noted that more than 14,000 of the whistleblower tips “were submitted by two individuals.”)

Other major SEC actions this year include:

• A $249 million settlement with Morgan Stanley and executive Pawan Passi, whom the SEC charged with leaking confidential information about block trades.
• A $100 million settlement with German software company SAP over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
• A $100 million settlement with FirstEnergy Corp., which it charged with fraud and participation in a political corruption scheme. FirstEnergy made $60 million in payments to a 501(c)(4) organization controlled by former speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives John Householder in exchange for political favors, the SEC asserted.

Click here to keep reading.—CV

In the two years since ChatGPT thrust large language models (LLMs) into the mainstream, generative AI has seen a flurry of advances—take it from a publication that’s tried to keep up with them all.

But some of that progress may be slowing in coming months, according to recent reports that have prompted much discussion in the AI world over the last couple weeks. At least three of the top AI companies—OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic—may be hitting a wall of diminishing returns as they try to scale up the next iterations of flagship models, according to reports in The Information, Bloomberg, and Reuters.

For years, LLM development has hinged on the idea that the more data and computing power is shoveled into training AI systems, the smarter these models will be. But tech companies are now reportedly hitting roadblocks—they’ve nearly run out of human-authored training data, accelerating costs are yielding disappointing results, and energy crunches have set back training, according to Reuters.

All of that could have big consequences for the future of AI development, as companies may decide to home in on more specialized tasks or pursue different kinds of gains, experts told Tech Brew. Tech stocks that have soared on AI promises may adjust accordingly.

But for businesses that are still trying to harness generative AI for everyday tasks, the news doesn’t necessarily mean much, these experts said. Many companies are already finding that the massive models on the market are often bigger than they need for their purposes, according to Arun Chandrasekaran, a distinguished VP analyst with Gartner.

Click here to read Tech Brew’s story on AI models reaching their limits.—PK