CCL Auditores Consultores is born from the merger of CCL Tax, J&A Auditores y Consultores (exJeria), SPREV, and Quinto Siete. The firm is composed of twelve partners and a team of more than 140 professionals.
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A new shake-up in the auditing industry was announced this Tuesday afternoon with the integration of four local firms, forming CCL Auditores Consultores (CCLAC). This merger brings together CCL Tax, J&A Auditores Consultores (ex Jeria), SPREV, and Quinto Siete, which under this new structure becomes the leading nationally-originated firm dedicated to consulting and auditing, aiming to compete directly with the Big Four in the large and medium-sized enterprise segment.
By expertise and industry knowledge, they claim not to lag behind. Most of their twelve leaders were partners or directors of the largest local audit firms (mainly EY and KPMG) or have headed divisions of the Internal Revenue Service and served on Tax and Customs Courts.
They emerge as a decentralized organization with offices in Santiago, Antofagasta, Viña del Mar, Concepción, Osorno, and Valdivia, consolidating a staff of 140 professionals, including lawyers, auditors, and engineers.
Divided into three zones nationwide. In the north, the office is led by José Quinteros (ex Deloitte and KPMG), while the central region houses the majority of partners, including Javier Jaque (ex EY and KPMG), Carlos Barahona (ex EY), Christian Delcorto (ex KPMG), Francisco Javier Orellana (ex Tax and Customs Judge), Carolina Caro (ex EY), Jaime Preiss (ex Garnham Abogados), Raúl Gómez, Rodrigo Ziade (ex EY and KPMG), and Gerardo Ugalde (ex KPMG). The southern region is managed by Renato Estay Valdés and Lorena Oporto Silva.
Origins
The project, which has been in the making for several months, responds to what this group of partners sees as a weakness of the major audit firms. “We left the Big Four world because we stopped believing in the model—a world where work is highly atomized and focused on young staff who attend clients, and that’s often where errors originate,” explains Javier Jaque.
This distance from clients and limited influence in decision-making within organizations of hundreds of partners—he adds—led them to develop a system that not only involves leaders more directly in daily management but also establishes a model with a set number of hours dedicated to client service.
“The big problem with the model of large consultancies is that one partner handles 180 clients, making it impossible to address all their needs, and that is our greatest differential. We have a determined number of partner-hours per client and enforce these limits because it allows us to maintain quality and closeness,” adds Carlos Barahona.
Regional presence is another key focus. Lorena Oporto highlights that this coverage is essential to approach new industries and reach companies that were previously out of reach as an independent firm: “With this integration, we will have more capacity to tackle other areas with greater force, such as forestry and salmon farming in the south and mining in the north.”
While the project targets direct competition with the “Big Four” and positioning in the large enterprise segment, they see an opportunity in medium and small firms. “These require much more support and guidance in tax and financial processes, and it is a niche where we want to be and become a kind of ‘primary doctor’,” emphasizes Jaque.
Internally, they also have an ambitious plan. “We want each partner to feel involved, and not just as rhetoric, which is why we changed our work approach; the same goes for our staff, whom we want to nurture and develop,” says Barahona. He adds that “in this industry, retention is very important because it leads to higher quality work, we can track careers, and ultimately this translates into turnover rates below 10% per year—in large audit firms, that figure exceeds 30%—and that is impossible to maintain in a big company,” he emphasizes.
Their next steps include opening a new office in Puerto Montt, which is already underway. From there, they aim to seek opportunities in a more organic manner. “The auditing industry needs new players; this benefits the market with more quality providers, and we are very hopeful that we will become a relevant player,” concludes Jaque.