Azets strategic office opening in Plymouth
Laura Pingree, the firm’s regional head of audit and Duncan Swift, restructuring and insolvency services team, discuss the reasons for its expansion, the challenges and how its clients are set to benefit.
What is the history of Azets?
Duncan: The firm was founded in 2016 but was rebranded as Azets in 2020, a difficult time for a brand launch but a brave move. The firm is the ninth largest in the UK based on revenues.
There had been a variety of significant regional firms that had been bought into the Cogital Group, it was then called, trading under their local brand names, but the firm with its private equity backer has accountancy firms in northern Europe, places like Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, which historically traded under the single Azets brand name, and given the recognition it has in mainland Europe, it made sense to extended it and unify the practices in the UK under one single name brand.
How did Azets decide to open this office?
Duncan: If we look at the 84 offices we have on a map in the UK, there are some strategic geographical gaps. Azets focuses on the SME and the smaller cooperate end of the market, with over 100,000 SME clients, focusing on providing local as well as trusted business advisors services backed up by technology but despite all of that, there were still some gaps in the geographical coverage and one of the major gaps was in the south-west between Plymouth through to Bristol.
The firm was looking at how to develop offices with expertise in that space and by chance Laura was available to join us as an audit partner and I have a background of having worked in Plymouth back in the 1990s, and I and my team joined the firm in April last year.
Laura: I worked here in the early part of my career, since then I’ve worked with large firms in London and internationally, so I’m bringing that experience back to the region. I’m also head of audit for the whole of the west region, so being based in Plymouth is really key as I’ll be looking to grow the audit services across the west region.
Do you think your SME customers will benefit from this strategic office placement?
Duncan: There’s quite clearly a heightened degree of attraction from prospective clients, let alone existing clients, that have expressed they would like to be serviced from an office facility. When you look at the marketplace in and around Plymouth, it makes absolute sense to bring the firms offering into the city as we are certain there will be demands for our services
Laura: It has been received as a success story for the region as the market that we are focusing on and the fact that we are both national and international is a bit different to what companies might have access to in the area. That’s what really differentiates us. Duncan and I both have experience on the larger corporate side which we are bringing to the region.
Will the office have tailored services to the area?
Laura: From the audit side, I think the world has changed in the professional services firms in the last three years because of Covid and how we deliver our services, so a lot of what we would do now would be location agnostic. We’d also certainly be looking to service the local market and look to bring in the specialist people as required from across the firm.
Duncan: Being in maritime city, Laura and I have got a set of expertise that fits the location, Laura particularly in maritime shipping and energy mining and renewables which feature around and in Plymouth, and I personally specialise in rural farming and food processing and production.
Plymouth has three principal industries: food production and processing, defence maritime industries, and leisure and hotel businesses. These are the three economic drivers of the local economy.
What are the targets for the office and team in the future?
Duncan: The expertise and sector knowledge that we bring to the table resonates with what is in Plymouth and regionally, I am certain we will attract business. We have done it before.
In terms of the targets, we see ourselves of having an office of 30 strong in three years, and that depends upon new client take on, we are offering extensive expertise in terms of sector and corporate client type, which is rare outside of the Big Four, with a competitive price that our competitors and the Big Four cannot match.
The region has great connectivity, if there was any region in the UK to benefit from the hybrid nature of professional services now and the ability to have virtual meetings, this is the region I think is going to benefit most from the new environment.
Laura: We are seeing a desire for people to live differently, people have moved to the west country for a better quality of life, and we are seeing a real pool of talent that we are hoping to harness which was necessarily available before.
What were the challenges in opening this office?
Duncan: The experience of having been here before and the corporate environment that we have both worked in, we are well placed to deal with our challenges. We have people within the company applying to work in the office, and a pool of graduate talent in the region to bring on and develop.
And something that Azets has historically done a lot of, which is to look at strategic acquisitions as and when there are professional firms on the market to bring in teams and specialists to complement that of what we have.
The firm has made a significant investment in taking two senior people and establishing a new office with significant budget availability to grow the office to a substantial size and they’ve done that as they can see there is a strategic gap as well as a set of specific sectors of skills.
How do you think the new office will affect the group’s profits and revenues?
Duncan: Azets has a strong track record of growth, driving positive revenues and profitability and this investment is very much in keeping with that.
Laura: We are going to build on the headcount and get everything settled, as Duncan mentioned earlier, we will be focusing on organic growth as well as any strategic acquisitions in the area.
What does the future of the office hold?
Laura: We will be getting involved in the trade fairs at the end of September, and we will also be looking to see what organisations we can get involved with to give back to the community.
Duncan: We both have a natural inclination to give back to a part of the world that we both really enjoy living in and working in. We want to support the local economy positively, and do so not only in Azets but working collaboratively with business owners and organisations to really drive the success of Plymouth and the southwest.
