Client Story | Partners& Interview with Phil Barton, CEO

What do Partners& do?

Partners& launched in April 2020. Phil and his associates had previously run large brokers and felt somewhat disenchanted by the reputation that the insurance industry had. Their aim was to do things differently!

“When everyone in the industry seems to be transactional, Partners& believe in the power of partnership.”

Phil and his team are passionate about insurance and what it can do at it’s best for clients but they feel that too often the industry falls short when clients need it most. Partners& wanted to be the antidote for that. As a result, they set up a challenger business to confront that issue in the marketplace and re-establish insurance back in its rightful place. Since then, they’ve been recognised as Insurance Broker of the Year 23, Schemes Broker of the Year 23 and Employee Benefits Intermediary of the Year 24.

 

We caught up with Phil, the founder of Partners&, to discuss how he
found The CFO Centre and why he felt the business required support
of a part-time CFO for their full-time CFO.

 

Why did you choose The CFO Centre?

Our goals are very, very similarly aligned. I’m really thrilled with the work that Chris and The CFO Centre have supported us with. When working with our clients, we understand emerging risks and develop effective solutions to address those risks, to help them get over their finish line and help them achieve their goal. And where we achieve it from a risk perspective, The CFO Centre achieve it from a financial and strategic perspective.

Why did you hire a part-time CFO through The CFO Centre?

We wanted to grow through both organic growth but also mergers and acquisitions this year (2024), partially driven by capital gain tax changes which were crystallised in the Oct 23 budget. This provided the opportunity for Partners& to undertake accelerated m&a but we didn’t have the capacity to do the detailed due diligence ourselves which is why we were delighted when we realised The CFO Centre could help us!

What was your experience like working with a part-time, fractional CFO?

We had a very positive experience working with Chris. He was able to turn the dial up and understood our approach. Chris executed on multiple acquisitions simultaneously – 6 in October 2024 (the day before the Budget). We are a collaborative acquirer, with a people oriented approach. We want to agree a solution that works for all involved and Chris is able to reflect our wishes in the work he does for us.

Why did you choose to have a CFO for your CFO?

Philippa, our Partners& CFO, and her team have great capability but the challenge was that we were travelling so fast we simply didn’t have the bandwidth internally to deliver all the ambitious plans we’d laid out. We needed a strong addition to our team who could get to speed quickly and mirror our style rather than try to change the way we do things. Chris did exactly that.

How did your full-time CFO, Phillipa, benefit from the support of a part-time CFO?

Philippa was able to keep abreast of all the acquisitions without getting bogged down with the detail herself. She was able to set clear parameters out for Chris and then he would report back to her in a way that she wanted to receive the information which worked really well in such a fast moving environment.

I can’t imagine how we could have turned all of the acquisitions around in such a short space of time without this extra capacity in the team.

What would be your message to businesses considering taking on a part-time CFO to support their current CFO?

For us, we’ve been delighted with the extra bandwidth we’ve been able to add to the team so seamlessly. Now we’ve got Chris, we can flex the time we need him up or down depending on what we’ve got going on so it really does take the pressure off both me and Philippa when we really are running so fast.

We’ve been delighted with his ability to reflect our ways of working rather than bringing his own style which just wouldn’t have worked given the timeframes we were working towards.

 

Are you interested in learning how our Fractional CFOs can help support your current CFO? Book in a discovery call today.

More information on our CFOs CFO offering is available here.