News and Insights

In the early stages of your business, culture tends to look after itself. The team is small, they joined because they are engaged with the mission, and they naturally absorb values from the founding team. But as headcount grows, and people start working in different offices and regions, how can companies keep that shared purpose and culture?

This was one of the topics at our ECI Unlocked: Performance Summit, where our keynote speaker Ronan Harrington described it as "like a DNA strand unravelling." Ronan discussed how companies can protect their “secret sauce” as they scale, and here are 4 key things to think about:

1. Codify and communicate your “secret sauce” early?

The first step is making the invisible visible. The purpose, values and behaviours you want within your organisation need to be defined. Most large companies like Netflix and Spotify have a written down cultural design, incorporating these items alongside the company’s strategic priorities.

This then enables you to reiterate and embed the behaviours through onboarding, managerial actions, performance reviews. If you want your people to be trusted, you need to make sure managers are setting that example and not micromanaging. If you have a ‘move fast, break things’ culture as at Facebook, you can’t combine it with managers who blame team members when things go wrong. Defining what it means to work at your company is the first step to ensuring it’s ready to scale with you.

2. Culture is communication

Every new starter needs to buy into your culture. While the hope might be that your company culture is so strong they will just absorb it, this is often where cultural drift happens. Don’t forget to talk about your culture, it should be something to be proud of! Messages take a long time to land, so if you think you’re over communicating, you’re probably at about the right level.

People want to hear from leaders within the business. For example, Sion Lewis, CEO of Ciphr, regularly shares CEO Insights on LinkedIn, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the business but also communicating to Ciphr’s people about the thinking behind various product or organisational decisions. This serves a direct line of communication but brings to life their value of Authenticity to life, Sion drawing on learnings from previous roles and openly sharing both successes and areas for growth.

3. Integrate acquisitions and new geographies with care 

M&A and international expansion are a turning point for company culture. Your culture is now competing with an already established way of working, a distinct localised set of values, and sometimes with international M&A, both.

Integration in either instance should never be incidental. It’s important to have trusted leaders in place within your organisation who understand the company culture and can percolate that through new offices or geographies, and to act quickly on negative behaviours that don’t reflect your business.

As Gurman Hundal, Founder of MiQ, recognised when they expanded into the US, you have to commit fully. Gurman moved to the U.S. to spearhead MiQ’s expansion and ensured that the values and culture of the ‘mothership’ were reflected. For Gurman, this meant a culture where mistakes were not discouraged, something all the more important as a satellite office where people needed to be trusted. MiQ also established a set of “anti-values” - behaviours such as ego or territorialism which were discouraged to foster a collaborative environment.

4. Reinforce culture and equip everyone to defend it

Ronan describes how one of the problems with company culture is that no one is ever formally mandated to protect it. That is why it requires everyone at a local level to feel invested enough to do it anyway. To do this you need to make sure values are made tangible through recognition and issues or feedback can be effectively surfaced.

It should be all staff, not just leaders who are engaged on this. And it should be a deciding factor in hiring, and firing, decisions. It is important to steer clear of what Ronan calls the “brilliant jerks” problem – people who deliver results but flatten morale or introduce bad behaviours into the wider pool. Toxic rockstars are difficult to manage as they bring in revenue and senior leaders often look the other way. It is important not to fall into this trap, cultural damage compounds over time, and if you haven’t defined and stuck to what you won’t tolerate, and the company culture that you initially set out to achieve may well have drifted.

We're delighted to see that Avantia has just reported record 2025 results, with turnover up 22% to £57m and underlying EBITDA up 42% to £24m.

This marks Avantia's eighth consecutive year of double-digit growth, driven by its proprietary risk and pricing technology, the development of its award-winning new claims platform, and its AI-first strategy.

Avantia now provides cover for over 350,000 customers, writing £175m of gross written premium in 2025. Avantia Group and existing capacity partner, AXA, announced a multi-year partnership extension in 2025, with the deal seeing AXA continue to provide capacity for Avantia’s Homeprotect customers. AXA and Avantia first partnered in 2012, with the extension signalling the strength of the long-standing relationship between the two businesses. Avantia's Homeprotect brand was also awarded 'MGA of the Year' at the Insurance Times Awards 2025.

During the year, Avantia launched its award-winning AI claims platform, ‘Holmes’ to transform claims processing and combat fraud. Holmes proved able to calculate payments with a 98% accuracy rate and make recommendations that meaningfully improve customer outcomes for around 50% of cases, accelerating resolutions for customers and generating significant operational savings. With Holmes now running on every claim, Avantia more than doubled its fraud detection rate through 2025, providing significant indemnity cost savings and streamlining resolution of legitimate claims.

The Holmes platform also earned regulatory recognition, with Avantia's Homeprotect brand selected as the only insurance provider to participate in the Financial Conduct Authority's AI Live Testing initiative – the first programme of its kind in the financial sector, designed to support the most advanced financial services businesses with the safe and responsible deployment of AI.

To help drive the next phase of its AI transformation programme, Avantia also expanded its AI team during the year with the appointments of Dan Hirlea as Head of AI and Saurabh Johri as AI Advisor.

Commenting on the results, Mark Eastham, Chief Executive Officer at Avantia Group, said, "Our 2025 performance demonstrates why we are the high-growth market leader in specialist home insurance. At a time when the insurance industry faces significant challenges, from rising fraud to claims inflation, we have delivered award-winning performance and an eighth consecutive year of double-digit growth. We’ve done this by combining cutting-edge AI with deep human expertise to deliver faster, fairer outcomes for customers and more efficient operating performance – without compromising on underwriting performance."

“Our strategy is to build a fully AI-led operating model that delivers a brilliant customer experience. We are continually enhancing our AI capabilities across pricing, risk analysis and customer experience, whilst building the scalability and resilience required to support our growth. We have strong momentum and a clear path to scaling customer numbers from 350,000 today to over one million.”

George Moss, Partner at ECI, comments: "Avantia's world-class decisioning platform and AI-first approach are well reflected in these exceptional results. Mark and the Avantia team have consistently grown the business since ECI first invested back in 2014, and are still investing in innovative technology to deliver even better results for their customers and partners."

At ECI, we believe that building successful businesses means building businesses for the long term. A social value strategy - how a company contributes to the well-being of its people, communities, and the environment – is often part of that growth story when it comes to attracting talent and winning new opportunities. From meeting public procurement requirements to aligning with investor expectations and engaging employees, ECI work closely with our portfolio to think about what is important to them, embedding social value to help to drive long-term, sustainable success. Here’s how to align social value to growth:  

1. Tailoring strategies to each business

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to social value. We support our portfolio in developing strategies that reflect their brand, values, and commercial goals. 

Many use frameworks like the Social Value TOMs (Themes, Outcomes and Measures) or the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure their approach is aligned with best practice and measurable outcomes.  

If you are seeing requests from customers, for example, around Net Zero, we would recommend incorporating this into your SVS. It is also helpful to take a grassroots view, and many companies establish ESG Committees or Employee Resource Groups to engage their people in the strategy right from the start.

2. Attracting and engaging talent

We’ve seen firsthand how a strong sense of purpose can help companies attract and retain great people. According to Deloitte, 89% of Gen Z and 92% of millennials say that having a sense of purpose is important to their job satisfaction—up from the previous year. Having clarity over your purpose can help attract employees and provide a feeling of purpose above and beyond their role.  At Ciphr, the company aligned its social value strategy with its brand and values, using it to energise internal teams and attract new hires who are passionate about making a difference through its company goals framework, V2MOM. Since embedding this, they have seen an improvement in their employee NPS (eNPS) of +33. 

Social value strategies also often include DEI initiatives like blind CVs or inclusive hiring practices, which not only signal a commitment to equity but also help widen the talent pool so you can be sure you’re recruiting the best talent.  

3. Winning business through purpose

A well-defined social value strategy can help businesses stand out in an increasingly competitive market, particularly where customers are placing greater emphasis on ESG.  

For example, TAG is responding to growing demand from artists and promoters for more sustainable touring options. By adding emissions totals to route options on their itineraries, TAG is helping clients make more environmentally conscious travel decisions. This means the artists they work with can reduce their environmental impact while maintaining the quality and efficiency of their tours - turning sustainability into a commercial advantage.  

Peoplesafe, the global provider of workforce safety technology solutions, has a purpose-led mission to protect lone and at-risk workers through innovative safety technology. This mission not only helped attract new customers but also opened up new markets. As protecting employee safety became part of how their customers demonstrated a strong duty of care, new modules such as Travelsafe, which helps keep employees safe on their commute, were developed. In 2026, Peoplesafe was realised to Summa Equity's Article 9 Fund, which aims to address critical global issues – in this case workplace safety and risk management.

4. Sustainability-linked loans 

A third of our portfolio now have ESG-linked KPIs in their debt agreements, tying financial incentives to sustainability and social outcomes. 

Having a clear social value strategy helps companies to define and track these KPIs, aligning teams around shared goals and delivering tangible financial benefits when targets are met. Supporting companies to define those KPIs and key milestones they're looking to achieve, is a part of ECI's ESG toolkit.

5. Finding your next investor  

Through analysing the scores on our ESG framework, we’ve seen that companies scoring higher on our ESG framework tend to achieve stronger returns. ESG is now a standard part of investor due diligence, and is a good indicator of businesses that understand and mitigate risk. So being able to demonstrate that ESG is embedded in your business and drives growth, either ‘checks that box for them’ or ‘creates a more compelling opportunity’, depending on how important ESG is to their Fund .

While there is evidence that the ever-growing appetite for more ESG data and assessment is slowing in the current era, investors are still seeing demand from the LPs in their fund and regulators. So even as the broader ESG conversation evolves, we believe social value will continue to be a key part of building great businesses. 

Field services has all the key signifiers we look for in consolidation opportunities. The landscape is fragmented, it has strong revenue visibility, loyal customers and economies of scale.

Yet, outcomes vary for field services consolidators, as stakeholders often don’t recognise the fundamental differences that make this sector so unique. Faye Maughan shares her thoughts on why you must approach consolidation here with a people-first mindset:

1. Benefits of consolidation 

Local field services operators are strongly positioned to win against large incumbents, with all the benefits of local entrepreneurialism versus a top-down approach. Combine this with bringing together local operators, and we see that real efficiency gains are possible:  

• Route optimisation improves efficiency for engineers as well as limiting their time away from home 
• Cooperation on larger, national accounts unlocks new revenue streams and enhances brand reach  
• Spreading shared benefits across a broader revenue base enables greater resources for every individual in the organisation, from training centres to allow engineers to expand their skillset to improved digital tools that would otherwise be too expensive 
• A bigger group allows talented employees to grow within the organisation, important for attraction and retention in a tight talent market 

Individually, a local champion may struggle to service a multi-site national client. Together, it’s an attractive and more agile and responsive option to the larger players.  

2. The right way to do it – empowering the local workforce

In field services, the loss of an employee is immediately felt by the customer. The engineer who has serviced a client's boilers for seven years, who knows the building, who the client calls by name – that is the service to the end customer. The service is relationship-driven, locally rooted, and fragmented by nature.  

This is all the more important in a market where labour is in shorter supply. The best engineers know they have alternatives, and for the consolidation group, that means their investment has a high propensity to walk out the door. What engineers typically want is the autonomy, fair pay, and freedom that drew them to the job in the first place. Clock watching, scripts, or aggressive upsell targets may have them looking elsewhere. Equally, out of all the things to save on in the group, pinching salaries is not the place save. Rather, schemes that allow top performers to benefit from their contribution to the group should be highly encouraged.

All this means that the best consolidators are those that think engineer-first. That might mean using group scale to give someone a patch closer to home, or ensuring pay structures genuinely reward output. The point is making clear that the acquisition is adding something to their working life, not taking something away. Get it right and they will deliver better service and in turn improved customer retention – getting it wrong tends to have a quick impact on the bottom line.

3. The old school consolidation playbook might not work

There is a tendency, particularly for PE-backed consolidators, to think about bringing everything under one brand as quickly as possible. However, while that may work for some companies, it’s not a one size fits all approach. A local business trading for 25 years under its founder's name has built something genuinely valuable: a trusted reputation, embedded in its community, reinforced by word of mouth. Customers do not choose it because of its marketing. They choose it because their neighbour recommended it, or because they have used it for years and trust it. Individual businesses have individual cultures, that often reflect the needs of their local customer base.

We often see co-branding (“part of X group”) or other types of affiliation is often a good middle road to opening up the group benefits whilst retaining the local loyalty. This also gives more autonomy to local managers, who are empowered to continue to run their local hub / business in the context of the larger group. Consolidating under a handful of existing, strong, regional brands is another solution to preserve the legacy that has been carefully built over decades.

4. PE's role is to add infrastructure, not interference 

This raises a question. If it’s all local and individual – how is private equity helping here?

The answer is infrastructure. What local field services businesses often lack is the operational backbone that lets their people do what they do best, more efficiently and at greater scale. We tend to see a few common areas that smaller local businesses may struggle to deliver on their own:

• Scheduling technology that reduces dead time on the road and means the same team handles more jobs without working harder.
• AI-assisted tools that help engineers on-site, for example through report writing and compliance documentation.
• A common ERP system that enables data sharing and financial visibility across the group.
• Training and development pathways that give engineers a reason to grow within the group rather than go elsewhere.

Conclusion: consolidation is ultimately a people question 

The economics of field services consolidation are real. But we see that success is not driven by the fastest to centralise, or to push cross-sell opportunities. Measures of success here are often engineer retention and satisfaction – that measure of M&A success, is likely to be what delivers long term growth. By doing the right things for the group, growth naturally tends to follow.