Donald Reid

They said, well, the only thing that's happened so far is that the finance function has been integrated.

nothing else has happened and we're not sure what's going to happen or when, which sort of raises the question mark, what was the motivation behind selling the firm in the first instance?

So examples, they're bad examples, but communication and clarity of communication is absolutely key.

Well, I think there's a challenge.

challenge there in terms of how you, as a firm, then demonstrate your compliance with consumer duty and how you're treating clients fairly.

Because to my mind, you can't have a client that walks into one office with half a million and is then given a proposition and a pricing model.

And that is then materially different to a client that walks into a different office with the same half million and with the same risk profile or attitude to risk.

And they can end up in a different proposition and a different pricing model.

That's very difficult to justify to the regulator.

And I think some firms have been a little bit late in terms of making sure that the service that they're delivering does actually deliver value to clients and fairness to clients.

That is absolutely key.

I mean, the other reason for moving on this as quickly as possible, going back to Julia's early comments at the start of this session,

is that if you can bring things together, then you bring together under one culture, the firm, and you don't have a series of stovepipe cultures, stovepipe processes, which can then become very inefficient using different platforms or your assets or different operating models.

That can be incredibly inefficient, deliver a poor experience to clients.

It means that your support teams need to learn how

become proficient in working with different platforms.

So the sooner you can standardize and bring things together under one culture, that is the way that you then start to deliver enterprise value, which of course is what the investors should be looking for.