How to scale your financial advice firm without losing soul

Consolidation in financial advice used to seem simple: buy up smaller firms and watch assets under management (AUM) and EBITDA expand. Consumer Duty raised the bar. Growing businesses must now be more discerning about the firms they acquire and how they integrate them, ensuring consistency of client outcomes across the whole business. Integration often requires significant change, which can hollow out the very cultures that made both the acquirer and the acquired firms successful in the first place. Firms experiencing rapid organic headcount growth face a similar risk. How can growing fi...