Every year, CPA/PFS professionals walk past an unusually powerful business-development advantage hiding in plain sight: tax season.

Tax preparation creates a moment of maximum financial visibility and maximum trust density. And, for many firms, that combination happens only once a year at scale.

Most CPA firms that offer investment advisory services already know that only a minority of tax clients are also investment advisory clients. However, most are at a loss to answer this key question: “What can we do during tax season that is truly client-centered, demonstrably objective, and operationally feasible, to secure new investment advisory clients from our much larger tax preparation client base?”

One compelling answer is to use the data you already see (brokerage statements, fund/ETF line items) to run a rapid, transparent comparative analysis of the client’s mutual funds and ETFs, right when the client is already thinking seriously about their financial life.

Later in this article, we describe a new way to do this that you could find to be a true gamechanger, making it possible to rapidly grow your investment advisory client base in a single tax season.

Why tax season changes the recruiting math for CPA/PFS advisors

1) You’re already inside the trust moat. Traditional investment advisors spend years trying to earn what a CPA often has already earned: credibility grounded in accuracy, confidentiality, and long-term relationship. That trust dramatically lowers the friction of “Can we take a deeper look at this?”

2) You have immediate access to holdings data. Tax prep frequently surfaces brokerage statements that reveal the investments the client owns (and often how concentrated they are). That creates a natural opening for a disciplined, client-friendly question:

“Would it be useful if we did an objective check on how these holdings have compared to other options in the same asset classes, using the performance factors that matter most to you?”

3) Clients are mentally in “review mode.” They’re gathering documents, revisiting income/withholding, seeing capital gains, and confronting reality. That’s the right psychological context for an evidence-based review; not a pitch.

The real opportunity: making “performance gaps” visible in minutes

The ProRapidReview approach to new investment client recruitment is built around a simple idea: within a given asset class, you should be able to score and rank hundreds of mutual fund and ETF options using a custom-weighted blend of objective quantitative performance factors; not just a single return period or.

This process provides you with the ability to provide the client with an answer to this key question: “How did my mutual funds and ETFs do compared to all of the alternatives I could have selected?” and not just a comparison to a single benchmark index.

The often-large performance gaps that will be revealed and the objectivity and transparency of the process – something the client will have never before experienced – provides a you will a compelling competitive advantage.

Mechanically, the workflow is:

1. Enter a mutual fund and/or ETF (ticker or name).
2. The tool identifies the relevant asset class and runs an initial comparison using default return + volatility weightings.
3. You (and the client, if appropriate) adjust which metrics matter and how heavily they’re weighted; pulling from a menu of 48 quantitative factors (returns across multiple periods, volatility measures, Sharpe/Sortino/Treynor, fees/expense ratio, manager tenure, turnover rate, alpha, downside deviation, and more).
4. The tool produces a composite score and rank order, plus a chart visualization designed to highlight how few choices tend to separate from the “slope of mediocrity.”

This matters in practice because it reframes the conversation from “Trust my opinion” to “Do you want an objective process that helps us both see the tradeoffs clearly?”

That’s a qualitatively different client experience.

A CPA/PFS tax-season playbook that doesn’t wreck your workflow

Here’s a practical, low-disruption model that respects tax season constraints.

Step 1: Create a “portfolio checkup” lane (separate from tax prep)

Offer a simple option:

• Tax meeting remains tax.
• Checkup is a separate, optional, scheduled review (15–25 minutes) that can happen:
  • after the return is filed, or
  • in a dedicated slot during the season for higher-value clients.

This separation is important for professionalism, client comfort, and compliance hygiene.

Step 2: Triage clients (don’t boil the ocean)

Pick criteria that match your business model, such as:

• taxable brokerage assets above a threshold
• self-directed investors with messy holdings
• high concentration in a few funds
• clients paying high advisory fees elsewhere
• clients with repeated taxable distributions / avoidable tax drag (a frequent “pain signal”)

Step 3: Run a 3-holding “first look”

During the checkup meeting, focus on the client’s top 3 holdings (by dollars or importance). This keeps the meeting crisp while still delivering a strong signal.

Use the tool to:

• show the default return/risk framing
• then ask the client which factors matter (fees, downside protection, consistency, etc.)
• produce the ranking and compare the client’s holding to top-ranked alternatives within the same asset class

The goal is not to “win the argument.” The goal is to help the client see that there may be meaningful differences between what they own and what else has historically met their objectives more effectively.

Step 4: Convert the insight into a next step

A clean close is not aggressive. It’s operational:

• “If you’d like, we can do this across your full portfolio, identify and analyze comparative performance gaps, document the rationales for portfolio adjustments, and build an ongoing monitoring cadence.”

That’s a fiduciary-aligned offer, not a sales line.

Why this can be a compliance asset, not a liability

When investment selection becomes a defendable process (factors → weights → score → ranking → documented rationale), you’re not just improving outcomes; you’re improving governance.

The ProRRT^SM explicitly positions you with a way to provably demonstrate alignment with “best interest” expectations and requirements, to both clients and regulators, by showing that recommendations match client objectives and reduce conflicts.

Start with the free “Checkup” version; on purpose

The ProRRT^SM offers a free Checkup tier that retains the core functionality but limits investment-name visibility; useful for screening current recommendations and demonstrating the process before you commit to a subscription.

This is especially relevant for CPA/PFS advisors because it lets you validate two things quickly:

• Client value: Do clients respond to this kind of transparency?
• Firm ROI: Does it reliably create productive advisory conversations with the right people?

A final note on tone: the best version of this is calm

The highest-performing version of this strategy is not “gotcha.” It’s not “your advisor is terrible.”

It’s a quiet, professional reveal:

• “Here’s how your holdings compare within their peer set.”
• “Here’s what your stated priorities imply.”
• “Here’s what rises to the top when we measure usomg your investment preferences consistently.”

That is exactly the kind of client experience CPA/PFS professionals should own.

And tax season is when you can do it at scale.

See how it works here. And try it for free here. 

Here’s how it’s done:

• Simply contact the prospective client and arrange to meet; anywhere will do – e.g., a coffee shop.

• Ask him or her to bring their most recent brokerage statement or quarterly investment report with them, explaining that you have something important that you’d like to show them.

• When you meet (and after buying them a cup of coffee, etc.), ask him or her to pull out their brokerage statement or investment report and tell you what their single biggest investment holdings are (you don’t need to see their report or how much money they’ve invested),

• Then open your laptop or pull out your iPad and log onto the free ProRRT℠ Checkup Tool and explain to the prospect how the technology works as he or she watches you score and rank what they are holding against all other available choices within that asset class.

• It is important to show them the factors that can be used, and to ask which ones are most important to them and how much weight should be placed on them. Involving them in the process is very important, since they will have never experienced anything like this – the transparency, objectivity, and most importantly, the feeling of empowerment in now being included in the review and selection process.

• When he or she is happy with the factors and weightings, compare the multi-period returns and multi-period volatility of theirs against the top scorers.

In most instances, the top ranked choices will have produced substantially higher average annual returns with often less volatility – in other words, they’ll often see significant return premiums with no equivalent risk premiums . . . and the return premiums can often be quite large.

After performing this same comparative analysis for a few more of their holdings, say this:

“I can do this for all of your investment choices, and we’ll likely get similar results. But, at this point, one thing is looking pretty clear . . . it looks like ‘you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.’ Do you want to stay where you are (with your current advisor) or would you like to come over to us, where we’ll use this new technology to help keep your investment choices optimized and help you make more money?”

We know from experience that this will get you new clients.

Try it and you’ll quickly see the value for yourself.

If you recruit just one new client, with just $300,000 of investment assets during the course of an entire year using this unique client recruitment strategy, at a 1% fee, you will have more than paid for a full annual ProRRT℠ license.

But there is no reason you cannot recruit many times more clients and AUM, generate much more revenue, and better protect your clients from being “poached” by competitors.

Try it and see.

On January 10^th, we were surprised to see this brief article on Analysis-Paralysis, stating that: “By 2031, there could be one million managed investment products.” The article also points out that: “As of June 30, 2023, there were more than 742,000 products available.”

Wow! That’s dramatically more that we had estimated.

In many of our earlier posts, you’ll see us point out there are estimated to be well over 20,000 mutual fund and ETF choices. We believed 20,000+ to be a conservative under-estimate.

What we didn’t expect was finding out that we might have been under-estimating by a factor of 10X or more!

The article points out the largest single group of these investment choices is mutual funds and that the number of ETFs is also very large and rapidly growing.

However, whether it’s a total of 20,000 or 200,000+ mutual funds and ETFs, there are so many choices and so much information about each as to make trying to evaluate which ones are best for your clients, especially individually customized recommendations, virtually impossible.

What’s needed is a way to effectively use and benefit from such an overwhelming and growing number of choices and volume of information.

Fortunately, there has been a significant advance in information technology – the ProRRT℠ – that now enables investment advisors and brokers to objectively score and rank any number of mutual funds and ETFs, within any asset class, in mere moments.

Importantly, for Reg. BI compliance, it also effectively filters out all conflicts of interest, both known and unknowable. It gives you the ability to provably demonstrate to regulators that what you are recommending to clients are in your clients’ best interests.

The ProRRT℠ utilizes Decision Technologies Corporation’s patented decision-assistance technology that enables you to select any blend any of 48 different performance parameters and individually weight them to match their degree of importance to your clients and you.

Using this blend of weighted performance factors, the ProRRT℠ will enable you to score and rank all of the funds within any asset class. It will show you (and enable you to show your clients) just how theirs (those you’ve recommended) did compared to all of the other choices you could have recommended and not just to a benchmark index.

It is also important to understand that a simplified version of the ProRRT℠ is now available to individual investors (your clients). It’s called the Retail Investment Tracking Application℠ (aka “Rita℠”).

Why is that important?

Well, with Rita℠ (and the 24 performance factors it provides), individual investors will now be able to score and rank, for themselves, the mutual fund and ETF recommendations you’ve been giving them.

If they see that one you’ve recommended ranks 176 or 227 out of 677 choices within the asset class, with average annual returns (of perhaps 5%, 6%, or more) less than the top ranked funds and with higher average annual volatility over the last 5 years, then what?

Would you be at risk of losing that client?

Would you be vulnerable to another advisor (using the ProRRT℠ to show your client that performance difference) recruiting your client away from you?

It’s important to understand that “The Rita℠ Effect” is real and, from experience, we believe its core lesson is simply this: Advisors cannot afford to have their clients know more about the relative performance of what the advisor has recommended than the advisor does.  

We also believe that as investor awareness and use of Rita℠ grows, so will the benefits of the ProRRT℠ to advisors using it, as will the risks to advisors who do not.

Regardless of the possible effects of Rita℠, in this world of too many choices and too much information about them, the ProRRT℠ was specifically designed to help advisors answer this key question:

“Of all the available choices, which ones are best for my clients?”

It was also specifically designed to help you recruit clients away from your competition.

Take the no cost and no risk opportunity (using the free “Checkup” version of the ProRRT℠) to see just how good the mutual funds and ETFs you’re recommending REALLY are in comparison to others in which you could have recommended.

Try it and see for yourself how much money you and your clients may have been, and perhaps still are, “leaving on the table” by being in poor performing choices – choices that you (and they) have had no meaningful way, until now, to comparatively evaluate.

In a world in which everyone appears to be doing the same things in largely the same ways, it’s time for a meaningful change.

It’s time for you to be able to clearly differentiate yourself from your competition and to benefit from the unique competitive advantage, better investment results, and greater client satisfaction that the ProRRT℠ can uniquely provide.

And, for any special help you may need with your firm’s compliance approval process, please contact us. We’ll be happy to carry the weight of that for you.

Early in our development of our Professional RapidReview Tool^℠, one of the people assisting us in new business development (let’s call him “Albert”) called to ask if I would be willing to meet online with his “significant other” (let’s call her “Rita”) to use the ProRRT^℠ to score and rank some of her mutual fund investments in advance of a meeting with her investment advisor.

I happily agreed since Albert had been of great help in making introductions.

When I met online with Rita, she had her brokerage statement handy. So, I opened the ProRRT^℠ and began to use it to score and rank her mutual fund investments, with her not only watching but also participating in the selection and weighting of performance factors important to her.

We started with the mutual funds in which she had the largest balances. Altogether, in about 45 minutes, we scored, ranked, and discussed her four largest holdings.

One scored well and was relatively highly ranked. So, there was no compelling reason to recommend a change.  The other three, however, ranked way down in their asset classes and it appeared clear that there were choices that had performed much better and better matched her needs, goals, and preferences within their asset classes.

It’s important to understand that Rita, while a very sophisticated and highly educated lady, has been a largely passive investor and was not knowledgeable regarding the comparative analysis of mutual funds and ETFs.

However, she clearly understood what she was seeing.

She stated that she had not seen anything like this . . . nothing that provided her with a way to see for herself the full range of choices and how they compared to her own holdings. 

She pointed out that she had been relying on the recommendations of her investment advisor, with no meaningful way to determine if those recommendations were good, much less the “best,” for her.

At the end of our meeting, she surprised me by asking: “Should I just go ahead and fire him?”

I suggested that she not do so, but to see if he would get her what she wanted. I pointed out that, because her account wasn’t large, if she proved to be too much trouble, he might actually fire her. With that bit of advice, Rita thanked me, we ended the meeting, and I thought no more about it.

Several days later, I was talking with Albert, and, toward the end of our conversation, he asked: “Would you like to know what happened with Rita?” I said: “Sure, I’d love to know.”

He then told me that Rita had fired her advisor. “Really?” was my surprised response. “Yes,” he continued, “she came back and told me that she would be willing to go to a different advisor (one with which Albert was working) but only on the condition that he license and use the ProRRT℠ technology.”

This unexpected result proved to be very instructive. It revealed an additional compelling rationale for investment advisors to obtain a license to use this new technology.

That important “lesson” is this. There is no way an investment adviser can afford to have a client know more about the relative performance and position of his or her mutual fund and ETF investments than the advisor who recommended them.  

A “retail version” of this technology, for individual investors (like Rita), has now been released – it’s our Retail Investment Tracking Application^℠, aka “Rita^℠.” Yes, we named it after the person who I had helped.

With that release, individual investors are now able to score and rank their mutual funds and ETFs for themselves, in virtually the same way I did for Rita. What will they discover when they do?  How will the ones you have recommended stack up?  

Here’s the takeaway: Rita^℠ is now here.

Are you prepared for “The Rita Effect^℠”?  

Can you afford not to be?  If Rita, in the story above, reacted in this way, how will your clients react?  And that highlights a second, less obvious but equally important, lesson.

Rita did not want to do the scoring and ranking herself. She wanted an advisor to do it for her . . . one that has licensed and is using the ProRRT^℠. 

That’s “good news” for investment advisors using the ProRRT^℠ – Rita^℠ could prove to be a source of new clients.