Financial Consolidation for a Multi-Entity Advisory Group

Ashcroft & Vale Financial Group operates as a holding company with several regulated advisory subsidiaries, each required to maintain its own statutory accounts under UK financial services regulation. Group consolidation is performed manually each quarter, complicated by each subsidiary using slightly different account coding conventions inherited from earlier, separate implementations.

Regulatory reporting deadlines mean the finance team regularly works under significant time pressure each quarter, and the manual consolidation process leaves little room for the variance analysis that would normally help catch errors before submission.

The engagement begins with a detailed mapping exercise between each subsidiary's existing chart of accounts and a proposed harmonised structure, run closely with each entity's finance lead to ensure statutory reporting requirements specific to their regulatory permissions are fully accounted for. Entities are migrated in a phased sequence based on reporting complexity, starting with the most straightforward subsidiary.

A Dynamics 365 Finance implementation with a harmonised chart of accounts applied across all subsidiaries, paired with native consolidation functionality, is designed to meet the group's regulatory reporting timelines with room to spare for review — preserving entity-level statutory reporting while enabling clean, automated group-level consolidation.

Group consolidation can typically run in a fraction of the previous time, giving finance teams meaningful room for variance review and quality checks before regulatory submission deadlines.

A harmonised chart of accounts also tends to make comparing performance across subsidiaries far more straightforward for group leadership, supporting clearer strategic conversations about where to invest.