The Challenge: A Critical Skill Gap, and No Time to Fill It
When a long-serving member of the operations team at Brunsdon Financial handed in her notice, it left a very specific gap. Brunsdon advised nearly 800 households with around £265m of assets under advice and income reconciliation was a key part of her role.
Julie Treherne, Operations Manager at Brunsdon, knew the problem wasn’t just about finding a replacement. It was about finding someone who already understood the role and that’s not something you can easily write into a job advert.
“It’s a certain set of skills. Trying to explain it to somebody who’s never done it before is quite hard. Nobody really knows what it is unless they’ve done it.”
The firm had already been outsourcing paraplanning, so the concept of using an external specialist wasn’t new. What they needed was the right partner; someone who already knew the financial services world and could hit the ground running.
The Solution: A Trusted Team With Shared Industry Experience
Julie had heard of Jigsaw Tree through a connection and crucially, she already knew some of the experienced team who worked there. That familiarity made a difference from day one.
“I know what they did, I knew what they could do, their capabilities. So I thought; let’s see what they can do for us.”
The engagement started with income reconciliation, and it worked. Early on, Julie was allocated Gemma, who she had worked with previously in the industry. The shared language, the mutual understanding of how financial services operates, meant things clicked quickly. This relationship effectively replaced three days a week of time spent by an in-house member of staff at Brunsdon and it came with absolute peace of mind.
Over time, Gemma moved on within Jigsaw Tree and Lorraine Bunn took over. The relationship was again built on real industry experience and genuine rapport and has remained solid.
Going Further: Process, Technology and Workflow
As Brunsdon evolved, so did the scope of the partnership. Julie worked with Chris and the Jigsaw Tree team to look more critically at the processes behind the business; specifically around service cases and workflows within Intelligent Office (IO), their back-office platform.
The firm had been using IO for years but hadn’t fully exploited its potential. Having someone external, objective, and knowledgeable to come in and map out what they were doing and where they could do it better, was invaluable.
“Having somebody to look at it objectively from the outside, helped enormously. During the day-to-day job, you just don’t have the luxury of time to set things up properly.”
The result wasn’t a wholesale overhaul. It was a formalisation of what they already did; creating structure, adding consistency, and making it far easier to onboard new people when the time came.
That investment in process discipline would prove its worth during the firm’s later transition.
Flexibility When It Mattered Most
Business doesn’t stand still. Over the past six months, the team at Brunsdon before and during an acquisition process, have been going through significant internal change; staffing shifts, restructuring, and ultimately being acquired. Through it all, the Jigsaw Tree relationship has been a constant.
At one point, Julie found herself without a finance department. She called Jigsaw Tree.
That flexibility isn’t something you can always guarantee from an in-house team navigating the same pressures. It’s one of the less-talked-about benefits of outsourcing: the ability to scale support up and down based on real-world need, without the overhead of renegotiating contracts or managing headcount.
Data Confidence During Transition
As Brunsdon migrates its data into new systems, Julie has one significant advantage: she knows the income reconciliation data is right.
Years of consistent, careful work by the Jigsaw Tree team means she isn’t starting the next chapter with question marks over her figures. That confidence and knowing which data is clean and which inherited records need attention, is enormously valuable when you’re moving platforms and onboarding into a new parent organisation.
“Of all the data I’ve got, I know that’s right, thanks to Jigsaw Tree.”
The process work done on service cases and workflows through IO has also laid useful groundwork. The team is already familiar with workflow-driven processes, which makes the move to new systems a natural evolution rather than a culture shock.
The Bigger Picture: What Outsourcing Actually Delivers
When asked what she’d say to a comparable firm sitting on the fence about outsourcing income reconciliation, Julie didn’t hesitate.
“It’s a no-brainer. Just do it. Jigsaw Tree are so efficient; they’ll look at everything and identify areas you need to focus on. You know where you stand. You can choose how to move forward, how to prioritise. Income reconciliation. They just get on with it. All I do is send them the statements each month.”
There’s also a broader commercial argument, particularly for smaller and growing firms. Taking on a specialist in-house costs money, time and management resource. Outsourcing allows you to access that expertise without the full overhead, and to scale it as the business changes.
“It’s quite expensive to take somebody on these days. Having somebody who can do this, even temporarily, while you get started; you can always reassess later. If I was a new adviser setting up my own company, that’s definitely something I’d think about first.”
At its core, what Jigsaw Tree has provided isn’t just technical capability, it’s peace of mind. The confidence that a critical function is being handled by people who understand the industry, know the systems, and have the flexibility to adapt when business life gets complicated.
Thinking about outsourcing income reconciliation or back-office operations?
Talk to the Jigsaw Tree team to explore what’s possible.
