Meet the Yorkshireman whose firm wants to shake up the 'dry' world of accounting

Fortus has seen its North of England division, which is headquartered in York and also has growing teams in Leeds and Scarborough, grow revenues by 40 per cent to close to £4m and increase headcount by 20 employees to almost 60 over the last 12 months.

Since its launch at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Fortus has grown rapidly, both organically with new and existing clients, and through buying other practices.

In the past two years Fortus has made three significant acquisitions of well-established firms: PCLG in York, Winn & Co and Rayner & Co in Scarborough.

Executive director Craig Herbert told The Yorkshire Post the company is working on three further acquisitions – two in York and one in Leeds – which if successful could in taking their workforce up to around 120 people.

"We’re growing rapidly. Half our growth is acquisition-based and half is organic. We are not just a consolidator going around snapping up businesses – when we do buy these businesses we are fundamentally overhauling them from traditional and maybe bland ways of working to modernise and embrace technology.

"We are making sure we have the Fortus way of processes, procedures, working as a region and really homing in on culture. That underpins everything we do.

"Our goal within the next five years is to take the business to about £10m worth of turnover.”

Mr Herbert, who is originally from Doncaster and started his career at the Inland Revenue in York before joining a tax firm in Leeds, in 2009 established the C3 Group, which was a business providing outsourced tax related services to firms of accountants and financial advisors.

In 2018 he was approached by Chris Timms – who at the time was Regional Managing Partner at Haines Watts in the Midlands – with the idea of establishing a new firm and merging Craig’s existing business in the North of England. He accepted that proposal and then spent the best part of two years creating the Fortus brand.

He said: “Our model is quite different to a traditional firm. It has been phenomenally successful with every acquisition – we’ve not had any acquisition where we’ve not grown less than 20 per cent in the first year.

"The traditional accountancy model is one whereby the client will have one relationship with a partner and won’t know many people behind the scenes. There’s an expectation that partner knows everything about every service line – whether it is VAT, tax, insolvency, legals, you name it.

"The reality is in the modern world that is not possible.

"Our model is very, very different. We don’t have generalists, we have service line specialisms. But we also have client handlers who have very good relationships with clients. The concept is they’ve got to go in and ask relevant questions and get under the skin of the business. They can be a sounding board for the client and if there is a pain point, bring in one of our service line specialists and project manage the delivery of the solution.”

Mr Herbert says the perception that accountancy can be dry “is absolutely true”. "I think we are coming in and trying to disrupt it. We want to come in and say it doesn’t have to be this way.”