For Founders Who Already Have a Structure
Most founders who come to us already have some structure in place. A holding company set up years ago. A trust drafted by a solicitor who has since retired. A share class structure that made sense at the time. The architecture exists. The question is whether it is connected, current, and doing the work it was designed to do.
Why structures drift
Your accountant
A historian
They record what happened. They file what is required. They manage the structure that already exists. They do not design the structure above your business, and they do not review whether the structure you have is still fit for purpose as your capital grows.
A capital architect
A designer
They look at the whole picture. The entities you have, the entities you need, and how capital moves between them. They review whether your existing structure is doing the work it was designed to do, and redesign it where it is not.
These are not competing services. They are sequential. Your accountant manages what exists. A capital architect designs what should exist. If you have never had the second conversation, your structure has been managed but never reviewed as a system.
Five signs your structure has drifted
Your holdco exists but capital does not move through it freely
A holding company that functions as a filing layer rather than a governance layer is one of the most common structural gaps we find. The entity is there. The architecture that makes it work is not.
Your trust was set up years ago and nobody has reviewed it since
Trust law changes. Your financial position changes. A trust designed for a £2m estate does not automatically protect a £12m estate. The constitutional layer needs to keep pace with the capital it is supposed to govern.
Your advisers have never sat in the same room together
Your accountant handles tax. Your solicitor handles the trust. Your IFA handles the investments. None of them has ever designed the structure as a single system. That is not a criticism of any of them. It is a description of a gap that is costing you money.
You have never seen a capital projection that covers all three layers simultaneously
Income tax, CGT, and IHT modelled together, across your specific numbers, over a 10 to 20 year horizon. If you have never seen that document, you do not know what your current structure is worth, or what it is costing you.
You are not sure who controls what if you are not available
The constitutional layer includes an Incapacity Protocol: who makes decisions, how capital moves, what governance authority transfers to in the event you cannot act. If that is not documented and legally binding, the structure is incomplete.
What the audit finds in existing structures
Holding companies that are filing layers, not governance layers
Trusts that have not kept pace with estate growth
Share class structures that cannot distribute income tax-efficiently
Capital that cannot move between entities without triggering a personal tax event
Succession plans that are intended but not legally binding
Exit structures that would crystallise CGT that SSE or EEV could have eliminated
"I had a holding company. I thought that was the architecture. It was a filing layer. What I did not have was the constitutional layer above it, the one that governs how capital moves and how the whole thing holds together when I am not in the room."
Three-company group, £1.1m combined profit, Kent
Before you book the call
Answer these before booking. Alex reviews them before you speak, so the call does not start at the beginning, it starts at your specific structure, your specific gaps, and what you actually want to know.
The right next step
Five minutes. You will see your Capital Vulnerability Index score, the specific gaps in your existing structure, and the estimated cost of those gaps in real numbers. If your structure is working correctly, the audit will confirm it. If it is not, you will know exactly where the gaps are.
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