Building sustainable growth at BeyondFS

In 2018 Matt Beattie, Matt Neill and Alistair Catto launched BeyondFS, a consultancy providing expert services to major banks and insurance companies to increase efficiency, better manage risk and enhance customer experience. 

To begin, all three founding partners worked together across clients, developing accounts, building credentials, and winning work through trusted relationships.  

In 2022 came a shift. BeyondFS landed a new client – a large Nordic bank facing significant regulatory challenges that required large-scale financial crime transformation. A relationship nurtured for over ten years, the sales process alone took over 18 months to close. 

“The network has been vital to us. It’s opened access to a network, given us frameworks and baselines to work from and much more”

With programmes of this scale typically lasting 12 to 24 months, this was a career-defining project for their client. It also required a team of over 30 consultants – a big ask from a consultancy of eight people.  

Matt Beattie, BeyondFS co-founder explains, “It was a wonderful problem to have. We sold the work and then we solved the problem afterwards. I pedalled like mad and spent months being a recruitment consultant, finding the right people to go into those roles”. 

For 12 months, the team focused almost entirely on that one client, ensuring all their needs were met. A year in, they realised they couldn’t sustain that approach. Their pipeline had stalled. 

They decided to dedicate one partner to that client, while the other two shifted their focus to growing the rest of the BeyondFS business. This involved recruiting top talent, increasing capacity, and lightening the operational load, enabling the founders to refine their business strategy, adapt their proposition and expand into new markets. 

This was a turning point in their growth. As Matt Beattie says, “Two years ago we were at £2.2m. Taking on this work accelerated our growth to £8.8m last year and we’re on target to go beyond that this year”. 

Benefits delivered by The Consultancy Growth Network  

Matt Beattie explains what being part of TCGN brings to BeyondFS, “We’ve been a member of TCGN pretty much since it started (over 4 years). The network has been vital to us. It’s opened access to a network, given us frameworks and baselines to work from and much more”.  

Some of the benefits include: 

• Member events – “In every one of the TCGN events we come to, we’re scribbling notes and taking things away. That’s gold dust for us.” 
• Marketing accelerator – “The Marketers in Consulting group, hosted by Matt Hodkinson at TGO, has been so helpful in working on our marketing challenges with experts and peers.” 
• Specialist providers – “We have worked extensively with Caroline at New Minds to recruit and integrate new people that we’ve brought into the business, The Wow Company provides our accountancy support, and Bruce at Consulting M&A has given us great guidance”. 
• Growth experts – “We’ve worked for several years now with Augusto Negrillo and Vivero. His support in growing our business has been invaluable”.