Newsletter 2025-09-29
Changes at Baker Tilly Stockholm
The traditional accounting industry, as we all know, is facing major and disruptive changes. The industry is changing rapidly through digital transformation and increased automation with AI at the center. Traditionally and until now, the industry has done well without major investments. A number of software companies have provided the industry with new technology and taken on large development costs in the cloud-based software that companies and the industry widely use.
What we see today is that software developers are now starting to integrate and compete with the industry vertically and that customers are increasingly becoming dependent on those players. To meet this competition, we believe that significant investments and changes in working methods are needed.
Baker Tilly Stockholm has always tried to be at the forefront of technological developments. We were early adopters of digital technology with scanning solutions, invoice interpretation and simplified working methods for our customers. Now we believe that a bigger approach is needed to distance ourselves from the established software players, but also through investments in AI tools to take further steps in this process. We do not see ourselves as big enough to run such a process ourselves.
Baker Tilly Stockholm has therefore decided to find a new, capital-rich owner for our accounting and payroll group. An actor that has both capital, drive and capacity to meet the future and its challenges. An actor that also has a proprietary CRM system to simplify flows integrated with a proprietary accounting program, Bflow. This does not mean abandoning Fortnox, Visma e-ekonomi (now Spiris) or, for that matter, Briljant, which some of our customers use, rather a complement that can meet competition and dampen price developments for the aforementioned software.
New owner of Baker Tilly Stockholm Accounting and Payroll is Freedom Group. The new company has the working name Freedom Stockholm AB and the goal is to constitute a future hub for Freedom Group's total operations in Stockholm. Freedom Group AB currently consists of 380 employees in 38 locations in Sweden through 26 individual agencies.
So what happens now?
Freedom Stockholm AB will take over existing customer relationships as of October 1st insofar as they relate to accounting and payroll. Per Freij, who is currently CEO of Baker Tilly, will become CEO of Freedom Stockholm AB. We will all remain in our current premises and work together, just as we have done before – at least for the foreseeable future. In this way, we see the transition as smooth and as painless as possible for both customers and our staff. The change means that new engagement letters will gradually need to be drawn up regarding accounting and payroll services.
The board of Baker Tilly Stockholm AB
