03/07/2020
Shocking that at the time this blog was posted GT was forecasting that 48% of UK council faced funding pressure were reserves reached 5% of budget. That figure must be considerably higher now. Better financial forecasts is an easy objective to get behind but the value of your financial model is only as good as the quality of the data you are applying.
With many councils increasing their investment in commercial and residential assets or developments, this is the starting point for financial management. Crequant have been working with councils to bring in depth underwriting and financial modeling to commercial projects, using best practices and the latest technology for speed of delivery, accuracy and importantly transparency.
No more black-boxes from which advisors pluck results! Many years ago I was working for a global RE Advisory Firm, our compliance on reporting required us to provide client financial reports using the then state of the art "Black-Box". So plug in the project figures one end and get out the standard report to go with our advice showing the accepted client requirements. However, our sovereign wealth and institutional clients always required us to produce separate and detailed Excel financial models that were flexible and transparent, even if our office numbers had to come out of the Black-Box. Clients were inherently suspicious and so they had every right to be, then there was also the fact that no matter how clever you black-box Programme is they can never provide flexibility that can cover every scenario real estate can throw at you.
Transparency and accountability is key in developing robust investment and development financial forecasts, because as we all know things change and stakeholder confidence can often be the determinant factor in a successful outcome.
We are pretty passionate about getting things right and providing our clients with bullet proof outcomes that are both detailed, accurate and fully auditetable. Finally, no matter how detailed or complicated a financial model becomes it must still be flexible enough to accommodate changes or advanced scenario modeling, which can then be exported into easy to digest reports or presentation that do not require a PhD in mathematics to decrypt.
If you are involved in your councils real estate investment activity or have the responsibility of representing your constituents we would love to show you how we could add value.
Accuracy- Transparency- Accountability
At the Solace Summit in Birmingham last month we discussed our learning from working with councils deploying our Financial Foresight approach. This blog summarises the key points of the discussion. What is Financial Foresight? Building on Grant Thornton and CIPFA’s successful partnership on the CF...
