Making Innovation Work: What’s Ahead at ICI’s Tax and Accounting Conference

Innovation in asset management often starts with a big idea: a new investment strategy, product structure, or technology that could improve efficiency, broaden investor choice, or expand access to new opportunities.

But a big idea becomes a viable investment product only when the details work—when the fund can satisfy tax requirements, its assets can be valued, its financial statements audited, and its operations and controls can support it day after day.

Tax, accounting, valuation, audit, and operations professionals are the people who translate the industry’s biggest ideas into products investors can trust.

Their work will be at the center of ICI’s 2026 Tax and Accounting Conference, convening September 27–30 in Marco Island, Florida. The conference will bring together fund treasurers, tax and accounting professionals, auditors, regulators, and other industry experts to examine the practical questions accompanying a rapidly changing investment landscape.

Private Assets Put Valuation in the Spotlight

The growing effort to expand individual investors’ access to private markets is a clear example.

Bringing private-market assets into daily-priced regulated funds creates valuation demands that differ from those typically faced by traditional private funds. Even with less frequent transactions, limited market inputs, and complex investment structures, funds must still calculate daily NAVs, maintain robust oversight, and provide reliable investor reporting.

ICI and its members have spent much of the past year advancing practical solutions. That work has included publishing valuation governance considerations for private credit assets in regulated funds and advocating for a new FASB standard for investment companies that substantially reflects ICI’s recommendations on valuing equity securities subject to contractual sale restrictions.

This year’s conference will examine these developments, while also exploring the implications of incorporating alternative assets into regulated funds and ETFs.

Innovation Brings New Tax, Audit, and Regulatory Questions

Product innovation also requires careful thinking about tax implications.

Tax considerations influence how investment products are designed and structured, how they operate, and ultimately investors’ after-tax returns. As regulated funds adopt more complex strategies, tax professionals are confronting new questions about how those investments fit within longstanding tax rules. The conference will take up those questions directly, with sessions on tax consequences of fund innovation, alternative assets in ETFs, international tax developments, and tax operations.

The conference will open with a keynote and fireside chat featuring Doug O’Donnell, who served as both Acting Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of the IRS.

These discussions come as ICI continues to advocate for tax policy that supports long-term investors, including the GROWTH Act, while helping members work through the tax questions created by new products and investment strategies.

Innovation also places new demands on auditors and regulators. New asset classes, valuation processes, data sources, and operating models create new challenges for auditors and regulators, who must respond to emerging risks while maintaining audit quality and investor protection.

PCAOB Chair Jim Logothetis and Nikki McCarthy, Chief Accountant of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management, are among this year’s featured speakers. Their perspectives will help attendees understand how regulators are approaching these issues as products and market practices evolve.

Technology Is Changing the Work

Artificial intelligence, automation, and tokenization are already changing how funds operate and how tax and accounting professionals do their jobs. Tokenization could further reshape how fund shares and other assets are issued, bought, sold, and serviced.

New tools could help firms identify exceptions earlier, process information more efficiently, and reduce manual work. They also raise important questions about controls, audit trails, governance, and accountability.

Sessions on AI and tokenization will focus on what these technologies mean for funds and how firms can use them while maintaining the controls and standards that underpin investor confidence.

The People Who Make Innovation Work

One of the conference’s greatest benefits is the opportunity to learn how peers are addressing common challenges. A practitioner may know how one organization approached a valuation question, implemented a new system, or interpreted an emerging issue. Bringing colleagues together reveals where approaches are converging, where questions remain, and what others are learning in practice.

The next generation of investment products will depend on the difficult and often unseen work of determining how funds are valued, taxed, audited, reported, and administered. Getting those details right is how innovation becomes durable, investor trust is protected, and regulated funds continue to evolve for the people they serve.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Marco Island and working together to make the industry’s next generation of ideas work.