Gilly Green

So I think those things are really important.

The next thing is the clients themselves.

I think it's really key to understand that in most firms, 60% of new business comes from client referrals.

I know that as an NAD of a wealth firm, it is an absolutely true statistic.

So if your clients stop referring, then your growth is definitely going to stagnate and clients won't recommend something if they don't know what the new world is going to look like.

It's a very disconcerting process being acquired by another firm.

And I think the third aspect is the management themselves.

And, you know, they're distracted by integration, by communication.

going out and doing lots of communication.

I think that really understanding that the quicker you can do your integration, the better.

Therefore, management needs to resource properly.

And I don't mean numbers of people on the project.

I mean resourcing with experience, resourcing with people who are perhaps there all the time.

So some sort of core permanent resource for your integration and M&A work.

So there's a number of things there that is key for management.

And probably the last one of those is really understanding that sponsoring the integration is key and it needs to come from the CEO, from the communications and engagement and culture perspective, needs to come from the COO in terms of getting things done in the background, data mergers and everything else first.

And even the CFO, because the CFO is usually responsible for monitoring an MI, but understanding that, you know, the growth is probably going to be suppressed for a while.

But targets need to obviously be appropriate to understand that.

So the quicker, I don't mean too rapid, I mean swiftly, but, you know, properly doing your integration is absolutely key.

I was going to say, just to add to that, one really important factor here as well is most advisors have to run to even keep up because I think there's something like 10% of assets go out the door per year at the moment.