Where we are

We are mid-way through Week 1 of the six-week Stage 1 engagement. The first three days were given to discovery: nine sessions across the Group, with three CrossVal members in each meeting, putting 27 man-hours into listening and consolidation. We already have a clearer picture of how M/HQ, Rethink and RAA operate today, and an early read on where the biggest gains are likely to come from.

The teams have been open and generous with their time. People arrived at sessions with their own problem statements, their own views on what was working and what was not, and an appetite to try new tools. That posture is the single most important input into what comes next.

Achieved since kickoff

Nine discovery sessions completed between 18 and 20 May, covering systems, operations, finance, compliance, HR, audit and corporate services. The shape and direction of the engagement has been validated against what we are seeing on the ground.

What we have heard so far

Six themes came up consistently across the sessions. None of them surprised the teams who raised them, and most were named before we asked. Read together, they sketch a Group whose growth has run ahead of its supporting systems, which is a common pattern for businesses at this size.

• Excel is doing connective work the systems do not. Viewpoint to Xero, BlueSky to Xero, KYC360 to Viewpoint, country-risk tools to Viewpoint. The teams have built workarounds that hold the chain together, which is a sign of how well they know the work. The opportunity is to give those workarounds back to the systems.
• Client and entity data lives in more than one place. The same record is held in two or three systems today. The MFID concept already exists as the bridge, and the teams use it. Extending it end to end is more an engineering exercise than a process change.
• Several workflows follow rules the teams already know by heart. Renewals roll forward, compliance calendars regenerate, board minutes follow templates, proposals are drawn from a catalogue. The teams hold the logic; the systems do not yet. That is the gap to close.
• Document drafting was raised by almost every team we met. Board minutes, audit working papers, compliance summaries, proposal sections. Marcia, Omar, Anna and Keerthi each made the case independently. A drafting assistant is a strong fit here, and the teams are asking for it.
• Cross-entity reporting is where finance loses the most time, by a margin. Every report to leadership begins with mapping data across Viewpoint and Xero. Deepti described this as her first pre-step. A single client and entity view would remove that pre-step entirely.
• Compliance volume sits in four clearly defined processes. Onboarding, periodic reviews, regulatory returns and the Compliance Monitoring Programme account for most of the team's time. They are well defined enough that supporting tools, once introduced carefully, should be straightforward to adopt.

Low-hanging fruit

What follows is an early thinking pad, not a recommendation. Each item is something more than one team flagged in Week 1, and where we can already see a route to addressing it. None of these has been sized, sequenced or signed off. The point of sharing them now is so that leadership can see the direction of travel and push back early if any of them feel wrong.

Sequencing and sizing follow the gap analysis in Weeks 3 and 4. Expect the list above to change.

Week 1 foundation, Week 2 plan

The first three days have put us on solid ground for the rest of the engagement. The teams have arrived with their own answers as often as their own questions, which changes the kind of work the remaining five-and-a-bit weeks need to do.

Where each workstream stands

Stage 1 runs as six sequenced workstreams feeding two synthesis outputs, as set out in the proposal. The table below is our read on where each one stands part-way through Week 1, ahead of the rest of the week and the Week 2 sessions.

Synthesis outputs

Two synthesis outputs sit on top of the six workstreams. We are working on both in parallel rather than waiting until the end of the engagement to start.

Stage 1 deliverables progress

Three written deliverables plus the engagement review meetings. Status against each is below.

Engagement review meetings (the fourth named deliverable) are running on cadence. The first weekly steering check-in is scheduled, and the end-of-Stage review session is held for Week 6.

Path to delivery

The engagement runs to a six-week calendar, with the public holiday period 26 to 29 May out as non-working. Delivery is targeted for the week of 29 June to 3 July. The calendar below sequences the work.

What unlocks Week 2

• Access. Laptop access. Viewpoint and NAS drive access for Ajinkya during Week 2. Already in motion via Geetu's team.
• Sessions. Three remaining sessions. Barry (Recruitment), Rethink internal compliance, and Rethink internal accounting. These close out the function coverage.
• Vendor introductions. Quantios and KYC360 introductions. Direct technical conversations land more usefully than documentation reviews on integration questions.
• Decisions when escalated. Steers on a small number of design choices. Flagged one at a time at the weekly check-in, not bundled at the end.

We will keep this document live for the rest of Stage 1 and refresh the status markers at each weekly steering check-in. Feedback on anything that does not match what the teams are seeing on the ground is welcome at any point.