Huntswood story
Founded in 1996 by David Brownlow and Philip Eaton, Huntswood provides a range of services to support businesses faced with regulatory challenges involving complex customer issues, as well as offering business performance improvement solutions.
David started his career as a policeman before becoming a City recruiter,
whilst Philip ran a logistics business. During this time both suffered
family bereavements, which made them question their ambitions and
goals in working life. From a small office in Windsor, Huntswood was
created, primarily as a recruitment firm.
The business grew quickly to £6 million turnover and in 1999 a new
opportunity was identified that would significantly change the business.
Huntswood deployed a team of contractors to Alba Life to work on a short-term pensions review contract. At the time the so called ‘big four’ firms were supplying teams of financial services professionals at extremely high prices, whereas Huntswood provided similarly experienced and skilled resources at a lower cost by taking a reduced margin.
With demand growing steadily and David’s recruitment background, Huntswood had access to a strong pool of associates. In early 2000 Equitable Life needed assistance with their Guaranteed Annuity Rectification (GAR) programme and Huntswood won the tender to supply and manage 200 contractors. This project pioneered the direction for Huntswood’s future; not only supplying resources but managing them too.
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During the next three years Huntswood became famous for fast, flexible resource based solutions, where quality people were deployed to assist clients with ‘pockets of pressure’. Annual revenues grew in this period to over £30 million and Huntswood invested in a permanent employee model, which is still in place today. The quality of Huntswood's service offering was further emphasised in October 2003, when David and Philip sold 30% of the business to private equity firm 3i. |
During 2004, the evolution of Huntswood’s service offerings continued. A consulting function was created to blend regulatory and performance improvement specialists to provide solutions to clients' strategic and advisory needs. Typically, they work with several elements within an organisation including people, process, technology, service, governance, quality and implementation with the aim of producing a faster, cheaper and better working model. This year also saw Huntswood move into new offices in Abbey Street, Reading, offering 27,0002 feet of client space, as well as opening offices in North Lanarkshire, both of which Huntswood still operate from today.
The success of Huntswood during this time was epitomised by David winning ‘Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year’ in the Ernst and Young awards 2005. In the same year Huntswood was 32nd in the Sunday Times Fast Track Top 100 and a year later saw Huntswood reach a record turnover of £51 million. It was estimated that due to Huntswood’s transparent and highly competitive pricing, clients realised a 65% reduction in compliance costs translating to an estimated £150m benefit to clients in 2005 alone. The following year Huntswood was named Best Outsourcing Services Provider at the Compliance Register Awards, and David won the ‘Best Chief Executive’ award at the Industry awards ceremony sponsored by Deloitte.
After six years of Huntswood being part of 3i’s Capital Growth portfolio, the 30th September 2009 saw the company negotiate a deal to regain the shares, which sees it once again solely owned by the founders.
By 2010 Huntswood’s clients included the top six retail banks, eight of the top ten life and pension companies, six of the top ten General Insurers and 13% of the current FTSE 100
Today Huntswood’s business is split into four areas:
- Customer services
- Recruitment
- People learning and development
- Consulting
Huntswood’s customer services function supports clients by providing skilled resources to help them address capacity shortfalls when dealing with specific issues (such as complaints, new business verification, paraplanning, etc.) involving their own customers. Typically they provide not just people but also project management, governance and control and quality assurance. The solutions can be tailored to deliver the work either on client site or from Huntswood's premises in Reading or Strathclyde.
The recruitment functions provides support to clients by sourcing and deploying individuals to help clients deal with pockets of pressure or short term gaps of talent. Typically this is done through supplying interim managers and does not involve any project management.
Huntswood’s people learning and development proposition enables clients to develop the talent, knowledge and confidence of their people, at all levels.
Consulting is the provision of support services to help clients improve the way they manage their customers and draws upon the company’s consulting, regulation and remediation expertise at an advice giving level.
Over the years Huntswood has helped firms manage critical business issues. Its expertise and reputation has grown since the days of the pensions review and in 2010 Huntswood is set to continue its mantra of providing tangible business results. Huntswood is primed for growth by providing solutions for their clients in a number of key areas, focussing on regulation and compliance risk, performance improvement, capacity management and the training and development of people.
