2019 was a busy year for us at Fram. It seems that political fatigue brings with it apathy and then action. Firms came to the point where they simply wanted to “get on with things”. Let’s also bear in mind that CEOs are mindful that they have a short window to make an impact and so their desire to make things happen is often enormous. There are of course headwinds and my own personal belief is that the cause of the issues firms are dealing still originate from the financial crisis, which was a long time ago now. Things like margin compression, the rise of passives in asset management (which is about cost), and increased digitisation (which is about insight, but also cost) – the instigator of change can be traced back to the analysis the crisis induced. Equally, this change brings opportunity and of course financial services is a large sector and so different segments can have very different experiences. Private equity has been very busy, specialist finance equally busy, and Fram is now regularly working with the fintech sector. The amount of brilliant ideas is inspiring.

Our own journey has been fun. The challenge and opportunity for Fram is explaining to clients that our capability now extends across multiple functions. That we bring industry knowledge, functional expertise, and of course a fair amount of great recruitment process. However, like all businesses, your often known for the initial service you offer, but where clients are using us across their business, I think and sincerely hope that they feel that they are receiving high levels of service. Business are a collection of people and great people change businesses.