Gilly Green

They all do too much.

And our previous report that Donald referred to on productivity basically said that advisors in advice-led firms tend to spend only 37% of their time as golden time, which we call client time.

That's not very much, given how much you're paying them to be with clients and to build business.

So you've really got to think hard about taking that admin off the table.

And one of the first things in integration you should do is actually look at that organizational model, not just your technical stuff that we'll talk about later, your organizational model and looking at how functions are, you know, who's got responsible for what functions and actually what admin you can completely take off the advisors table.

Can I just come back to the culture thing for a moment?

Because we all know culture eats strategy for breakfast.

And actually, it really does.

So I think we talk about it.

People say, oh, we've got a really good match of cultures.

What does that actually mean?

Lots of times people in due diligence are comparing the values that are on the wall.

That isn't the culture of a firm.

A lot of people don't understand how to assess it.

And yes, if you've got lots and lots of meetings with people, you can get an idea.

But actually, you're still only meeting the top level of the firm until you've done the deal.

You know, people ask me, what should we look at?

And some of the things to look at are things like incentives.

Incentives drive behaviours.

And you can guarantee that if the incentives are not right, you will get some funny, strange, undesired behaviours from people, particularly around the sales process, the relationship management ownership, things like that.