Hobart
Courtney Telega
One of her core strengths is providing end-to-end tax and accounting support to small-to-medium sized businesses with a high focus on driving profitability and value.
Succession Planning
Our team can assist you to understand your options in planning for retirement, whether it's now or in twenty years. We have a proven track record of supporting business owners in their succession journey.
In financial services businesses we often have an innate desire to look after our clients and team. As part of this, most advisers don’t want to sell their client base to the highest bidder as a cost to their relationships and legacy. This leads to succession planning being a mechanism to encourage and engage key staff in your business, and overtime transfer ownership of your business.
Why is succession planning important?
Tim Lane is famous for saying as Partners in these businesses, we’re custodians for the next generation. The ultimate exit for most practitioners is one where there is an interested adviser who wants to buy you out and own the business (or in a larger business, where there is a pool of talent doing this). Weekly, we’re talking to advisers who operate businesses and are looking to either enter or exit shareholders in their business.
When to consider succession planning
- When engaging key personnel in your business
- When trying to retain staff, by 'tying' them in with equity ownership
- When you want a reward mechanism to incentivise staff to grow your business
- When planning for your own retirement, and creating a pool of potential purchasers of your equity
Why engage us to help you with succession planning?
At Accru Hobart, we’ve successfully transferred half the business ownership in the last ten years, with two of our valuation partners becoming equity holders. This first hand experience enables us to help your team grapple with the valuation process, and the risks and rewards of practice ownership.
How does our succession planning process work?
We start with an indicative business valuation, after a discussion with the owner/s about their aspirations with the succession planning process. Following this, we interview the owners about their expectations, and educate along the way if needed. We then meet and interview the incoming equity holder/s. Understanding their drivers, understanding and aspirations is critical to developing a win/win succession plan. From here, we draft our succession plan, discussing with both parties and then agreeing an in-principle plan. Each plan is different, one may be heavily focused on KPIs as release mechanisms, whereas another may have tighter timeframes. As part of our process, we can assist with financing and setting mechanisms for future releases.
With the labour shortages facing the industry, and the difficulty to attract and retain great advisers, we’re seeing more and more internal succession plans every year. We always tell clients you can never start succession too early, so if you’d like to own a smaller slice of a bigger pie, reduce your risk and maximise your reward, contact us today.
Testimonials
Why Choose Accru
Accru has been helping clients buy businesses since inception. Our experience is underpinned by:
- Our valuation expertise
- Our understanding of financial services transactions
- Our understanding of cashflows in the industry
- Our understanding of business risks
- Our understanding of relevant payback periods
- Our understanding of the ownership journey
- Success stories and horror stories of business valuations
Complimentary Discovery Call
A complimentary 20 min call to explore your goals and options, and put you on the right path to a successful outcome.
Accru Succession Planning Experts
Hobart
Fiona Ettles
Fiona is enthusiastic about informing and reassuring clients of their financial position, be it in regard to the value of their businesses, or their tax returns.
Hobart
Tim Lane
Tim specialises in helping clients plan for the future with a focus on maximising business value.
ABOUT US
Accru is an award-winning
network of Australian
accounting firms
OUR CLIENTS
Testimonials
“Accru Hobart has supported our business development, due diligence and governance responsibilities for over six years. Our ongoing relationship is a testament to their professionalism, ability to understand our needs and provide specialised, professional support at a competitive rate.”
About
Our People
Our people are naturally experts in their field. With a team of 200 across Australia, you’ll find a myriad of skills to help manage your business and financial challenges.
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Profit… It’s not a Dirty Word
In medicine, the word profit can garner negative connotations. Often, we see doctors who run practices that make hardly any profit.
About
Accru Hobart
Accru is an award-winning network of independently-owned accounting firms in Australia. We help businesses grow, thrive and generate wealth for their owners…
Family businesses often find they have waited too long to begin planning their exit. Younger generations don’t always share their expectations of work. At the same time, economic and technological change can have unforeseen consequences.
What is succession planning?
Let’s first consider the definition of succession planning. It’s a strategy through which key individuals within a business, organisation or family are vetted and prepared for future leadership positions within the company.
These individuals may be the children of current business owners and operations, but that is not a necessity. Business succession planning could just as easily involve identifying promising candidates within the company who are being prepared to eventually take the reins from the current leadership when those positions become available.
In either case, the succession planning process is always about making the transition to new leadership as seamless as possible.
Expert support and guidance
We assist clients to successfully hand the reins of the business over to the next generation or to extract its full value on sale. Our advisors are experienced in dealing with all aspects of succession planning. They understand the psychology of success, drafting a will and dealing with the ‘dilemma’ of Capital Gains Tax. We can advise you on:
- Evaluating where a business currently stands in terms of its development
- Determining how to maintain and improve the value of the business
- Transitioning management across to the next generation or an external party
- Valuing the current business, and strategies to improving saleability and maximise value
- Minimising taxes and transaction costs
- Locating potential buyers or external management
- Analysing the potential for a management buy-out, trade sale or public listing
- Ensuring that accumulated wealth is separately and safely protected
- Financing the next generation and ensuring that wills are set up to properly deal with the business
- Structuring life insurance policies and dealing with risk management issues
- Ensuring retirement is planned and fulfilling.
Security for your business and family
Crafting effective succession planning strategies requires significant legal expertise. Previous experience is also a critical factor. However, because a major shift in leadership occurs only rarely within the average organisation, experience is often lacking. Fortunately, the specialists at Accru have overseen and helped direct this transition for numerous companies – large and small. We have the experience and expertise necessary to ensure your organisation’s leadership transition is a success.
We work through the challenges and family intricacies with you to maximise family wealth for retirement and achieve a beneficial outcome for everyone involved. Our approach helps to make the process of transitioning to a less hands-on role as smooth as possible.
If a change in leadership is on the horizon for your organization, contact Accru Hobart.
Start Your Journey
Are you in the market for an acquisition? Struggling to get to scale and thinking of merging? Trying to solve a succession issue?