Damon Brain, the newly minted CEO of Duncan & Toplis, unveils his ambitious plans to transform the firm into a tech-driven powerhouse while preserving its deep regional roots and commitment to exceptional client service.
Damon Brain has recently taken the helm as the first-ever Chief Executive Officer of Duncan & Toplis, one of the largest accounting and business advisory firms in the East Midlands region of the UK . This milestone appointment marks an exciting new era for the firm as it embarks on an ambitious growth strategy under Brain’s leadership.
With over 27 years of experience at Duncan & Toplis (ranked 36th in Accountancy Ages’ 50+50 for 2023), Brain started as a trainee and rose through the ranks to become a partner in 2004. He has advised thousands of businesses across the Midlands on critical issues such as expansion, financing, and strategic transactions. Now, as CEO, Brain is tasked with spearheading the firm’s ambitious plans to expand its capabilities, market presence, and team across the wider Midlands region.
Accountancy Age sat down with Brain earlier this month so he could share his vision for Duncan & Toplis, detailing the key strategies and initiatives he plans to implement to drive growth, foster innovation, and maintain the firm’s longstanding commitment to its people, clients, and communities.
From leveraging cutting-edge technologies to enhancing service offerings and upholding ethical standards, Brain outlines a bold roadmap for the firm’s future success.
Read the full interview below:
Clearly there’s lots of macro influences that can, and do, impact our industry. Competition, turbulence in the financial sector, political influences and the competition for talented people to name but a few. I’m confident however, that we can meet these head on and embrace the acceleration of our growth opportunity.
Our significant investment capacity will ensure that we can realise our growth strategy at pace, creating enjoyable opportunities and experiences for everyone. I am very optimistic that with our core values, excellent client base and fantastic team we will grab many opportunities over the coming period.
Duncan & Toplis will change and grow as we adapt and respond to the world around us, but we’ll preserve and enhance the best of our business; the elements of our culture that are key to our success.
Investments will be targeted in ways that help us to achieve our purpose. This requires us to build our resilience while gaining clear and sustainable advantages over our current and future competitors. To achieve this, we’ll retain a laser focus on our skills, efficiencies and systems to secure a pre-eminent position in our chosen markets.
Technology plays a pivotal role in the transformation of accounting practices. How do you envision leveraging technology, such as AI and blockchain, to enhance Duncan & Toplis’s services and client experiences?Duncan & Toplis have never shied away from emerging technology, and this continues to be the case, including artificial intelligence to enhance our performance, delivery, free up resource and add even more value for our people and our clients.
Indeed, we anticipate that over time and with gathering pace, an increasing number of the process elements of our work will be done by technology ensuring time is released to focus on project and advisory opportunities across our service portfolio.
Many other firms have introduced digital auditing in recent years, and the pandemic did indeed accelerate this adoption, but our point of difference remains. Rather than get carried away with the possibilities of data analytics software, we took a breath, broke it down and focused on the modules we thought our clients would like to work with the most. As an early adopter of this technology, we have become something of a centre of excellence for its use, and we’ve been able to embed the use of the technology within our audit methodology and our culture.
Fast forward to today, our clients are wanting more than a compliance service, and we have the tools we need to be able to provide that for them. Our relationships with clients are now more collaborative and we’re able to deliver more for them and drill down into high-interest areas.
There is no question that the industry is facing acute challenges from regulation and market competition but also talent shortages as fewer and fewer young people are likely to stay in the profession. As we grow, we must look ahead with an agile mindset, understanding the social, economic, technological, and political shifts that will shape our future.
We will be preserving the parts of our business and culture which are important to our future success and adjust and adapt to the opportunities or challenges that emerge, by continuing to deepen and broaden our expertise and resources in our existing locations. Some of the growth in our current locations will also be through the acquisition of like-minded practices, which share our culture and ambition and will further strengthen Duncan & Toplis.
Our purpose at Duncan & Toplis is to positively impact people, our communities, and the world around us; we take sustainability and our ESG responsibilities very seriously. We recently achieved “Road to Net Zero” status, meaning we’re on track to become a carbon neutral organisation in less than ten years’ time.
We’ve also published our first ESG report, outlining our team’s collective actions including supporting the Duncan & Toplis Foundation to support charitable organisations within a 20-mile radius of our locations, participate in the National Forest’s ‘Dedicate a Tree’ initiative, and operate waste reduction strategies across the group.
First and foremost, though, our team members are at the heart of absolutely everything we do and we’ve a number of initiatives in place to support this, including agile working, developing our team by investing in their skills and development, actively encouraging open discussion about perceived taboo subjects, including mental health and menopause through our #LetsTalk and ‘PositivePause’ team campaigns. We also offer free online fitness sessions, and at all times have a laser focus on our equality, diversity and inclusion policies.
We have taken significant steps to ensure that our company’s technical, quality and ethical standards are maintained. We operate stringent data security standards, with team members being regularly tested on their data security knowledge, and mandatory data security training on an annual basis.
This also includes the appointment of our technical director Stuart Brown to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) Ethics Advisory Committee in 2021. This body reviews the technical advice provided to ICAEW members, gives advice on complicated or precedent-setting cases and contributes to the development of new guidance and other policy issues. Stuart also coordinated our company’s contribution to recent national reviews into the future of the audit industry.
Our vision to be the team that clients always choose to work with and where talented people belong remains at the forefront and guides everything that we do, including our future investments, which will be targeted in ways that help us to achieve our purpose. This requires us to build our resilience while gaining clear and sustainable advantages over our current and future competitors. We will do this through focusing on our skills, efficiencies and systems to secure a pre-eminent position in our chosen markets.
I do also say that with the shortage of accountants and increasing requirements by clients for quality advice there is no shortage of demand in the marketplace and good competition is welcomed to ensure the businesses in our regions are well served.
Alongside our ongoing investment in technology, we offer a broad and deep range of professional services. Because of this, we can be sure that our clients are delivered a holistic, quality service from our team, who we equip with the skills and experience in order to do so. But we’re not content to stop there, and operate a client listening programme to understand our clients’ world, learn about their challenges, all the while maintaining our capacity to prepare for the future and continually enhance the services that we can deliver.
Our membership of Kreston Global gives us a competitive advantage. We can help our clients in the international arena, supported by multi-jurisdictional project teams delivering top-tier advisory and execution of services across the globe.
This is a tremendously exciting time to be part of the Duncan & Toplis team. I want to deliver exciting opportunities for our team to become involved in different types of work within a high-performance culture, allowing all to reach the pinnacle of their careers – supported by the Duncan & Toplis Academy that provides a continual learning environment for all stages of career from school leaver to retirement.
Our financial strength gives us the capacity to make the investments needed to develop our people, build our operational platform and grow our existing business as well as acquiring like-minded teams.
We have this month launched our ‘Growing Together’ strategy, which over the next three years will create a successful, sustainable business full of opportunity for everyone. At the heart of this is our why – to positively impact people, our communities, and the world around us.
By creating a positive impact across these groups – our colleagues and clients, the communities in which we live and work, and our wider world – we will ensure that Duncan & Toplis remains authentic, true to our roots, whilst building an organisation that is fit for the future. We are clear that our ambition is to always be chosen, not just occasionally or most of the time. Talented people will recognise Duncan & Toplis as the team where they will be supported to fulfil their potential, to seek us out, and find their home with us.
