12th February 2019
By Rik Heap, Director of Lifecycle and Leonard Curtis Business Solutions Group
We’ve met up again with Lifecycle Director Rik Heap to find out about more service lines offered to member accountants through its parent company, Leonard Curtis Business Solutions Group (LGBSG).
As a service line collective, Lifecycle is a one-stop-shop of specialists who work with member accountants to solve any of the problems that their SME clients may have. The breadth of our service offering means that we can plug any gaps that a member’s practice may have so that it can meet clients’ exact needs and requirements.
As well as providing an ongoing programme of free CPD and discounts, the professional service lines we offer include: Company secretarial and formation; equity finance for SMEs; debt advisory for SMEs; personal debt advice; corporate restructuring, insolvency and cessation; debt finance for SMEs; cashflow maximisation; property solutions and legal services.
Here we talk about those Lifecycle services that we didn’t cover off in our previous post.
What support do you give to those members whose SME clients are under pressure from creditors?
Our SME debt advisory team provides expert assistance to Lifecycle members and their clients who are under pressure from a bank, HMRC or indeed any other key creditors. We find that they’re often the result of cashflow issues, the impact of adverse events or even a weak management team.
The type of solutions we provide to accountants through this division include restructuring tax arrears and negotiating Time-To-Pay arrangements. And we’re good at it too.
In the last three years we’ve safeguarded over 14,000 jobs, secured approval of over 150 Time to Pay (TTP) proposals – repaying more than £26 million to HMRC – and raised over £250 million in finance. Our success rate of approved applications stands at 95%, which is attributed to our understanding of the constant demands on business owners and our tireless approach to finding solutions for them.
But it’s not just these big issues that we solve. Our debt advisory team also offers business improvement support for member accountants whose clients’ companies encounter other everyday health problems. Working with our business turnaround team, we provide restructuring and refinancing solutions to return it to peak performance.
More details of this Lifecycle service line can be found here.
Do you offer legal services to members as part of the Lifecycle offering?
Yes, we do. Legal services were introduced to the Lifecycle offering just over two years ago when Leonard Curtis Business Solutions Group launched Leonard Curtis Legal.
Through it, our own highly experience in-house team gives accountants and their clients access to comprehensive, practical legal advice on a wide range on issues that SME owners and their accountant advisors meet on a day to day basis. These include shareholder agreements, dispute resolution, employment and regulatory law. For any specialist legal advice that our in-house team doesn’t cover, we also have access to trusted third-party firms who will take on assignments at competitive rates.
What’s more, we offer a first consultation free of charge to accountant members. Our aim is to identify the issues and to find a speedy and low-cost solution with what is a value-for-money fixed fee and hourly rate service.
We’ve established a fantastic reputation amongst accountants and business owners. It’s all very new to them as historically such services have only been available to big companies through big law firms but now everyone can now have access to the very best legal advice through Lifecycle and Leonard Curtis Legal.
Find out more about the legal service support members get from Lifecycle here.
Do you only provide debt advice to companies?
No, we also offer debt advice to individuals and unincorporated businesses – giving members access to expert support and advice to help clients facing financial difficulties or insolvency. We understand just how distressing these situations are, but we bring the experience and level-headedness that can only come with decades of collective experience and having seen almost every conceivable issue before.
Every day we work with accountants and their clients to make complicated, stressful situations manageable in a non-judgemental way. This helps our members to take control of their clients’ financial distress and hopefully overcome it.
The advice provided by our personal debt team is direct – it’s important to cut to the chase and resolve the issue – but we always present plans that are welcomed by both clients and accountants. Difficult decisions are made once and quickly – the outcome being the creation of clear and concise strategies for clients. We also then work in partnership with them to implement it. We advise accountants and their personal clients who are dealing with Personal Guarantee liabilities and have extensive expertise in all insolvency processes.
You can find out more about Lifecycle’s personal debt advice service here.
What services do you offer in terms of insolvency, restructuring and cessation?
This is the area that Leonard Curtis is most renowned for, but as we’ve highlighted, it’s only one division within a much wider professional service offering.
It is, however, a key service which means we have over 30 qualified Insolvency Practitioners at hand to provide member accountants and their clients with the necessary specialist corporate restructuring services if they encounter financial difficulties. All are expert in all corporate insolvency procedures – including administrations, liquidations and CVAs.
This is yet another highly stressful situation for clients and their accountant advisors to find themselves in, which is why we offer members free initial advice with no up-front fees. It’s important to admit there’s an issue and ask for advice as soon as possible – that way, more solutions are available to us.
As well as dealing with insolvency procedures, we also undertake a significant amount of solvent winding up and it’s through this service line that we offer our bespoke My-MVL package, which is very popular for those members with clients requiring a solvent liquidation of simple, cash shall companies. Providing them with a much-valued extension of client service capabilities, this simple online offering saves members both time and money by streamlining the MVL whole process.
For more information on our corporate restructuring service line visit here.
Not yet a member of the Lifecycle network? Sign up for free here.