The Kind 2020 Wrap Up
It’s been an atypical year for Kind. Though every 12 months delivers unexpected shifts and surprises, this was a particularly extreme one. I know this has been a tough year for many, both in business and at home, and I’m immensely proud of what the Kind teams have achieved across 2020 under such challenging circumstances.
As February and March progressed, it became clear that this was going to be a time unlike any we’d seen in the history of Kind, and there was very real cause for concern. The Kind Team however has more than risen to the challenge, exceeding the expectations I had of what we could achieve working remotely, rapidly adjusting to the new challenges faced by ourselves and our clients. It’s a testament to the hard work of everyone in Kind that we’ve grown the business and the team this year, and we even had a seamless relocation in the spring to our new Lichfield headquarters.
Kind Consultancy have had our all-time most successful year to date. Launched at the end of last year, our Kind Agile Solutions offering has been warmly received by clients and has enabled us to rapidly deliver full teams of highly qualified, expert contractors to time-sensitive and high-profile client projects. We’ve been approached by a range of new clients based on our reputation and word of mouth within the Financial Services world.
The team itself has grown, with the addition of Shai Cassidy, who has already helped us to work on large scale contract projects for some of the biggest names in Financial Services & Banking. The whole Consultancy team has had an incredibly busy year, and I want to thank them for rising to the challenge and continuing to deliver focussed hard work and outstanding customer and client service, whether at home or in the office. Every single member of the team has been promoted this year, which is a testament to their individual commitment and the quality of everything we’ve done in 2020.
Elsewhere, we have partnered with TieTa to offer our client’s outsourced contact centre solutions, and we’re just preparing to unveil another exciting avenue of support for our clients and candidates. Keep an eye out for that announcement in early January. We’ll also be looking to expand the team further next year, with both Operational and Consultant staff.
There were a few uncertain months of not knowing what was going to happen in the housing marketplace, but the Kind Financial Services team soon picked up and, thanks in part to the changes in stamp duty, our existing client base, and the relationships we have we saw an increase in enquiries, helping to deliver a very strong end to 2020. We have partnered with new Estate Agencies and have done a fantastic job of making sure that clients are being looked after during the process of purchasing a new property, re-mortgaging, or investing during these times. We are also as always looking to bring more advisors on board and have conversations ongoing as I write this to hopefully look to expand and grow into 2021.
Kind Commercial had an excellent start to the year with some large Development completions supporting our regular housebuilder clients, but as expected, once when we went into the first national lockdown, we didn’t know what was going to happen. We looked to support clients with CBILS applications and kept up communications with them and the team all adapted to working this way and looking to see what we could do to help. As soon as building recommenced, we were back up and running and have had a very robust end to the year with lots of new enquiries and some large Development deals being funded. We have also welcomed Mark Foley to the team, who had come on board as Regional Director bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience and we are all really looking forward to working with him in 2021.
Kind is all about collaboration, sharing knowledge and skills, and this year has seen us thinking more about how to work best across our disciplines – to this end Amy Davies and Miles Bradley from Kind Consultancy have been promoted to Group positions, now providing their specialist skills to all three of our operations. We have also continued to build mutually beneficial relationships with outside parties, with Kind Consultancy partnering with the Building Society Association and Kind Commercial partnering with a large mortgage brokerage as just two examples of the many ways we’ve kept on growing our reach and forming strong links across our industries this year.
In a year that has been so testing for many businesses, I am incredibly grateful that we have not just survived but succeeded in 2020, and I want to take this opportunity to once again thank every single member of the Kind Team for their contributions this year. It feels like just a few months since I wrote the year-end wrap up for 2019 and I love that about Kind – we are always pushing forward with our eyes on the next goal, and I’m excited and optimistic to see what we achieve next. For now, though, some much earned rest. I wish all at Kind and our clients, introducers and partners a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I look forward to discovering the next chapter of the Kind story in 2021.
Mathew Kind
