This article was written by Lucy O’Boyle, Head of Content at Insignis
Company: PJCO
Accountancy firm providing compliance and virtual finance director services to owner-managed businesses.
Results with Insignis:
“Insignis has given us the key to actually action the help, rather than just floating advice at the year end.” Chloe Britnell, PJCO
PJCO works with a variety of SME clients, and until recently had been advising clients of the benefits of pensions and general investment accounts (GIAs) and putting them in touch with their trusted FCA regulated advisors to complete this work.
Those products suited many clients but some had cash reserves they wanted to make more of without locking the money away for the years a pension or GIA needs to deliver its higher returns. TAG recommended Insignis as the answer.
We spoke to Chloe Britnell, Partner and CTO at PJCO, to find out what that looks like in practice.
“Insignis gave us the flexibility to make sure [clients] were maximising what their cash was doing for them, and not just having it sat in the business current account.”
PJCO knew managing cash efficiency was important for their clients. What it lacked was a way to offer it as a service rather than just a recommendation.
Insignis closed that gap. Instead of telling clients to make their money work harder and leaving them to do the legwork, PJCO can now act on the advice it gives.
“Until now we’ve given the advice, and whether the clients follow it or not is then on them. Whereas now we can actually say, we can do it for you.”
That matters more than it might sound, because most owner-managed businesses are run by people who never set out to be finance professionals. Insignis’ Big Cash Blind Spot report also found that over a quarter of finance professionals weren’t aware of the FSCS protection limit change for businesses.
“A lot of these business owners have never been trained to be business owners. They aren’t trained to understand what they need to do with that money, and some of them have accidentally stumbled upon excess wealth in their businesses. So they need our help.”
PJCO’s clearest example is a construction business; an industry Chloe describes as typically cash-poor. This client, however, is now able to put significant cash reserves to work.
The client’s VAT bills run to £500,000–£600,000 a quarter. Left in the current account, that money is indistinguishable from working capital and earns nothing. With Insignis, it is instead ring-fenced into an interest-bearing account, kept separate from day-to-day cash but still accessible when the VAT bill falls due.
Weekly cash flow forecasting sits behind this, making sure that what goes into Insignis is never money the business needs in the next few weeks. The result is separation as well as return: the client always knows which funds are earmarked and which are his to spend.
“Being able to separate it out made it so much easier for him. He knew it was in Insignis, he knew it wasn’t gone, but when he was running his business, he wasn’t thinking about those funds.”
PJCO’s virtual finance director offering goes well beyond compliance. Chloe sits on the client’s board virtually, running credit control, debtor management, cash balances, weekly forecasting, and the payment run. It is a significant commitment of senior time, and it is priced accordingly.
Insignis changes the time spent on banking admin and refocuses it on more strategic support.
“I’ve been able to offset the cost of my time with the interest he’s received within the Insignis platform. That’s been really valuable to him, because he hasn’t seen the hit to his profits from the cost of my time to help him run the business effectively.”
The client gets a finance director without the profit impact and without the holiday pay, sick pay and employer’s National Insurance that come with hiring one. He can focus on contracts and subcontractors while PJCO handles the finances in the background.
Insignis gives PJCO day-to-day control through dual authorisation and configurable permissions, while the client keeps full visibility and final say. Both parties see the same account at the same time.
“He has full access and oversight of what’s going on, and so do I. At any point we both can log in and have a complete overview of the portfolio.”
Withdrawals can only be paid to an account in the client’s own name, which is a safeguard that matters as much to PJCO as it does to the client.
“I or any of my team couldn’t just go in and pull the funds to any bank account. It has to be paid into an account in my client’s name. So it gave him security, and us from an insurance perspective, which is vitally important when we’re controlling large sums of money on someone else’s behalf.”
PJCO started using Insignis with one client but has since started using the platform more widely.
“We’ve now rolled it out with smaller cash reserve clients, because we recognise Insignis is such an easy-to-use platform and has flexibility in terms of how long you lock that cash away for.”
Insignis also helps with FSCS protection. Smaller clients can spread their funds across multiple banks and building societies, staying within cover limits, without opening and managing several accounts themselves.
When asked if she’d recommend Insignis to other accountants, Chloe’s message was clear:
“Yes, 100%. Accountants can be quite bad at explaining their value and putting it down on paper. With Insignis, because you can see the returns, it’s black and white. [Just] the way accountants like things to be. They can truly quantify their value to a client.”
Insignis works with accountancy firms across the UK to help them offer cash management as a service, not just as advice. With Insignis, accountants and their clients can access 55+ banks and building societies with competitive rates and have full oversight of interest earned from a single platform.
Get in touch to find out how Insignis can work for you.
8 Devonshire Square, London EC2M 4YJ
St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Rd, Milton, Cambridge CB4 0WS
+44 (0)1223 200 674
