A transformational year
FY2020/21
Our purpose is to deliver positive outcomes with our colleagues, clients and communities
Download our FY2020/21
Annual Report and Accounts
Net revenue growth
Underlying organic net revenue growth
Adjusted profit before tax
+14%
+8%
+125%
+10.9
%
+14
%
+2%
+8%
£15.2
m
£34.2
m
Prior
year
Actual
Prior
year
Actual
Prior
year
Actual
Lock-up days
-20 days
206
days
£64.9
m
£60.2
m
186
days
-£4.7m
Net debt
Prior
year
Actual
Prior
year
Actual
Key performance indicators
Read all of our key performance indicators in the Annual Report | Page 02
Hear from our leadership team
Chair's statement
CEO Q&A
CFO review
“These positive financial results reflect the success of DWF’s differentiated offering which is resonating with clients and is therefore benefitting many of our stakeholders.”
Jonathan Bloomer
Chair
A clear strategy for growth
How we compete
Where we compete
Our enablers
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Our purpose in action
Clients
Communities
Our ability to seamlessly combine any number of our Legal Advisory, Mindcrest and Connected Services to deliver bespoke solutions for our clients is our key differentiator. Delivered through our global teams across eight core sectors, our Integrated Legal Management approach delivers greater efficiency, price certainty and transparency for our clients without compromising on quality or service.
Our work for Mileway, Europe’s largest last mile logistics real estate company, is an example of how our Integrated Legal Management approach is delivering positive outcomes with our clients.
Doing things differently
We continue to talk to our clients about our strategic differentiator – our delivery of integrated legal and business services through any combination of Legal Advisory, Mindcrest and Connected Services – whilst also leveraging our ability to identify new innovative products and services based around current and emerging client needs. We are beginning to pivot the right work to Mindcrest to provide an enhanced client service.
Understanding our clients
Through a ‘one team’ approach we aim to grow the number and contribution of our institutional client relationships, extending those relationships into new jurisdictions and practice areas. We will do this through our enhanced customer value proposition.
Geography
We will strengthen in priority locations through M&A, associations and recruitment. We create channels for greater collaboration to bring together all of the strengths within our business to help support our clients.
Services
We continue to invest in our Legal Advisory capabilities, but we will also scale our Mindcrest platform and seek new ways of introducing our clients to Mindcrest and Connected Services globally.
Engaging our people
We are embedding a culture of open, transparent and honest communication to further increase engagement across the business. By doing the right work, in the right place through the right people, we will drive greater profitability and therefore deliver greater reward and incentivisation for our strong performers. We recruit, retain and develop people aligned to our values, improving diversity and agility.
Governance, risk and compliance
The legal market is changing and we need to adapt and evolve as the world begins to emerge from COVID-19. We have defined our culture and values, our partner and employee value proposition, including our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion, and our global ways of working. We have also developed our Group Risk Taxonomy and focused on excellence through our Behaviours Framework, Code of Conduct and DWF Academy.
Infrastructure
We ensure that we remain operationally efficient through our business, with the right infrastructure and services that are robust and scalable for future growth. We actively manage our cost base and lock-up days and have introduced better controls on pricing and cost.
“We expect a favourable trading environment for FY2021/22 and for our approach to Integrated Legal Management to continue to expand existing client relationships and secure new client wins.”
Sir Nigel Knowles
Group CEO
“The Board is delighted with a FY2020/21 financial performance that reflects a more focused delivery of the strategy, greater operating discipline, a significant adjusted profit improvement and a robust balance sheet.”
Chris Stefani
CFO
Supporting the communities in which we operate has long been a focus of DWF and a source of pride for our colleagues. From volunteering in support of good causes, participating in our ‘5 STAR Futures’ social mobility programme, to fundraising for the DWF Foundation, our work with communities has been a strong driver of engagement for our people.
Through the past year, we have focused on instilling a ‘one team’ ethos, ensuring everybody buys in to the Group’s strategy and vision and is pulling in the same direction to achieve our goals. A critical element of making this a success is our Reward & Recognition programme. We know our colleagues are dedicated, hardworking and talented and it is absolutely right and essential that those characteristics are rewarded and recognised.
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Download our FY2020/21 Annual Report and Accounts
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Our purpose is to deliver positive outcomes with our colleagues, clients and communities
Read the Chair's statement in our Annual Report | Page 10
Read our Q&A with the Group CEO in our Annual Report | Page 12
Read the CFO's Financial Review in our Annual Report | Page 26
Read more about how we are delivering positive outcomes with our colleagues
Read more about how we are delivering positive outcomes with our communities
Read more about how we are delivering positive outcomes with our clients
Page references
001. Strategic report
056. Governance
116. Financial statements
Delivering positive outcomes with our colleagues
Through the past year, we have focused on instilling a ‘one team’ ethos, ensuring everybody buys in to the Group’s strategy and vision and is pulling in the same direction to achieve our goals. A critical element of making this a success is our Reward & Recognition programme. We know our colleagues are dedicated, hardworking and talented and it is absolutely right and essential that those characteristics are rewarded and recognised.
The challenge
With almost all of our colleagues working remotely during the past year, it was more important than ever that people felt connected, recognised and fairly rewarded for their efforts.
The solution
This year, we introduced our new Group Bonus Plan to ensure that all colleagues have the opportunity to share in the collective success of the business. With gateways around personal, divisional and Group performance, the plan seeks to strengthen responsibility and accountability, whilst also ensuring alignment with the success of the business.
We also adapted our main Recognition programmes: The Rubies, our annual Awards programme; and DWF Achievers, our day-to-day recognition platform.
We launched The Rubies last year with a showpiece event in Manchester to celebrate our colleagues’ successes. This year, the Awards celebrations became a virtual event with Executive Board members recording video messages to reveal the winners in each of our 10 categories. Winners were announced each day over a 10-day period in December.
We integrated DWF Achievers with Microsoft Teams, which made the recognition process even quicker and easier, and we highlighted one Achiever recognition through our weekly communication, DWF Digest. Wellbeing was added as a recognition category to help celebrate the unsung heroes who have gone above and beyond to put others first. Executive Board members took a more active role by reviewing Achievers each week and ‘Boosting’ recognitions, which awarded people points with a cash equivalent value.
The outcome
In its first year, the Group Bonus Plan is anticipated to pay a bonus to more than 90% of eligible colleagues – the largest bonus distribution in DWF history. Despite being fully virtual, the Rubies Awards received a record number of nominations with nearly 600 colleagues submitted for at least one category. DWF Achievers was even more successful, with more than 10,000 individual recognitions submitted – that is 40 people publicly saying “thank you” to a colleague for a job well done, every single working day. Together, we believe that the ‘one team’ ethos so clearly reflected in these outcomes has been a critical feature in the successful year we report on through this Annual Report.
Delivering positive outcomes with our clients
Our ability to seamlessly combine any number of our Legal Advisory, Mindcrest and Connected Services to deliver bespoke solutions for our clients is our key differentiator. Delivered through our global teams across eight core sectors, our Integrated Legal Management approach delivers greater efficiency, price certainty and transparency for our clients without compromising on quality or service.
Our work for Mileway, Europe’s largest last mile logistics real estate company, is an example of how our Integrated Legal Management approach is delivering positive outcomes with our clients.
The challenge
Mileway is the leading provider of last mile logistics real estate across Europe. It helps consumer businesses get closer to their customers – enabling fast delivery and accessibility with excellent customer service. To accommodate growing e-commerce demand and greater delivery expectations of an already large and growing property investment portfolio in some of Europe’s most strategically important locations, including the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, it needed a simpler way to manage its extensive UK portfolio. Mileway worked with DWF’s Legal Advisory, Mindcrest and Connected Services teams to find the right solution and deliver positive outcomes.
The solution
DWF’s Legal Advisory team had an existing relationship with Mileway, advising on a range of legal matters connected with the management of its portfolio in the UK. Our Legal Advisory team brought in Mindcrest to utilise process and technology expertise with respect to the asset management tenancy verification process.
The Connected Services division played its part too, with the 360 team delivering a bespoke version of EvoClaim, which Mileway and DWF have utilised to streamline its online real estate portfolio instructions. This proptech offering is an interactive asset management secure platform, allowing the client to communicate and collaborate with DWF’s Legal Advisory team securely on matters across the client’s portfolio. This is an ongoing project and other market leading proptech advances are being taken to fulfil Mileway’s increasing requirements. This has and will continue to further assist in expediting legal delivery, reducing risk management of the same and ultimately delivering a more efficient process for the drafting of a wide suite of Asset Management documentation and service to the client.
The outcome
This solution has significantly streamlined the portfolio management process for Mileway in the UK, saving time and resources and it has made sharing work with the DWF team more efficient. This has led to increased quality control and reduced risk management and has been a contributory factor in Mileway increasing the number of its instructions with DWF.
Delivering positive outcomes with our communities
Supporting the communities in which we operate has long been a focus of DWF and a source of pride for our colleagues. From volunteering in support of good causes, participating in our ‘5 STAR Futures’ social mobility programme, to fundraising for the DWF Foundation, our work with communities has been a strong driver of engagement for our people.
The challenge
The past 12 months have presented fundamental and profound challenges to people from all over the world. Perhaps none more so than communities in need and those charities and other organisations that provide support to them. With physical interaction and fundraising opportunities significantly limited, it has been very difficult for those organisations to provide the support to help individuals, groups and communities achieve their full potential.
The solution
Thanks to the resourcefulness and engagement of our colleagues, many of our activities to support the DWF Foundation and our communities more broadly were able to continue remotely. This included virtual 10k fundraising runs, with team members submitting photographs of their efforts to the Group intranet and remote 5 STAR Future sessions where young people were still able to gain mentoring support and guidance from people across our business.
The DWF Foundation also focused its resources to support those most impacted by COVID-19. This included providing £30,600 of funding to food banks across all of our locations, whilst our Mindcrest team continued to work with two schools in Pune,India, by providing funds, food and clothing to help the blind girls and orphaned boys who attend those schools.
The outcome
Despite the restrictions in place, colleagues gave up 5,876 hours of volunteering time in the last year. They also helped to support more than 600 young people to develop their skills, and continued to raise funds for the DWF Foundation which through the last financial year was able to make more than £200,000 worth of grants to charities in the UK and internationally.