The plan has already started. All the payroll, people issues and pensions are being sorted and will be operating by August. Moving people into our building will be a 12 to 18-month process, so it will all be completed by the end of next year.
Culturally, it will take longer – we learned that with the Scottish Provident International deal.
In terms of day-to-day new business, there is no intention to turn RL360° into a different type of beast.
We like the products we sell, we like where we sell them and we like our approach, which is slightly different to some of the other companies.
We are not trying to change the company we have spent six to seven years building. If anything, we believe this deal will give us the muscle to carry on doing what we are doing.
Will the CMI deal end your growth through-acquisitions strategy?
I have learned that if it became possible to talk to another company, you might not be shaking hands until two years from today. I am not suggesting I am doing this but you would be surprised how quickly you might find yourself entering negotiations that might mean you are getting serious in late 2016.
If in the autumn someone said, “Let’s have lunch,” I would have that lunch quite happily, knowing that probably does not mean we do something the next day.
I would say I am probably going to take the summer off but if people started to talk to me in the autumn then, of course, I would talk to them.
What is happening in terms of geographical growth?
We have been playing hard and reasonably successfully in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, by which I mean southern Africa. We felt we had market acceptance and that our service was good. Now is the time to take on Latin America.
We started accepting business from Latin America in September/October last year and it really took off at the beginning of this year. It has been much more rapid than we had envisaged.
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