The Loop Round-Up: March 2025

Welcome to your round up of news and updates shared on The Loop in March.   

Colleagues 

New team members: 

Over the last month we’ve welcomed nine new colleagues to the team, across our Finance, Audit, Accounts, Tax and Business Support service lines. We really hope you’re all enjoying being part of Affinia! 

Work anniversaries: 

We celebrated thirteen work anniversaries across the business, ranging from 1 to 30 years! A special mention goes to Ewan Reid, our Associate Director based in Stratford, who celebrates 30 years of service.  

Promotions: 

It has been a busy month for promotions, where we congratulated sixteen members of the team on the next step in their careers with Affinia. You can view our promoted team members in the following posts: 

Recent Promotions! – Affinia Marketing Blog / An update from the Private Client Tax team – Affinia Marketing Blog / Robert Tovey: Promotion to Senior Manager – Affinia Marketing Blog / March Audit newsletter – Affinia Marketing Blog 

Exam success: 

A further congratulations goes to our trainees on your exam passes – five colleagues passed exams across AAT and ICAEW – of these Josh Jones, Fern Webb and Ruby Smith are now AAT qualified – fantastic work team!  

Farewells: 

And finally, this month we said farewell to Elaine Oddie and Ian Neale, the founders of NSO, who both now begin their planned retirement. We wish you the very best in this new chapter of your lives and thank you for all you’ve done to help transition NSO to Affinia.   

The full People & Culture update can be found here: People & Culture March Update – Affinia Marketing Blog 

Clients 

Darren & Jake meet the IA team in India: 

At the beginning of the month, we shared the exciting news from Darren and Jake’s trip to Chandigarh, India to visit our newly launched IA team. The IA team is focused on providing support to the whole Affinia business around the I’s and A’s of our data cubes: 

• Architecture – how / who and where is our data held
• Integrity – assisting us clean and complete our data sets particularly introducing client datasets
• Analysis – producing dashboards and management reporting for the business and potentially as a tool for clients
• Insight – using human and artificial intelligence to help us make better decisions  

You can learn more here: Darren and Jake visit the new “ia” team of Affin-ia in Chandigarh, India – Affinia Marketing Blog 

Our Spring Statement campaign: 

Last Wednesday our tax and marketing teams worked closely together to share news of the Chancellor’s Spring Statement. You can read the full guide here: Spring Statement 2025: Your Guide to Changes | East & South East | Affinia. Please do share and discuss with your clients.     

Our Corporate Finance client event: 

On Thursday last week we hosted our first Ask the Experts: M&A Masterclass event for our Corporate Finance service line, in partnership with Ellisons Solicitors.  

This was the first in a series of planned events across our office locations, where a panel covering financial, tax and legal angles share their insight into acquiring for growth and maximising the value when selling a business.   

The next event will be held at our Stratford office on April 30th, with Richard Lane as the compere and host. Please feel free to share the event invitation with any clients who might be interested in this topic. You can find full details of the event here. 

The Corporate Finance newsletter: 

In their newsletter, our CF team highlighted recent wins and ongoing projects, some secondments which have been taking place in the team and of course the M&A events they are promoting to clients and prospects. You can check out their full update here: Corporate Finance and M&A newsletter: February 2025 – Affinia Marketing Blog 

For those who are active on LinkedIn, you’ll have seen they have completed several transactions this month – a huge congratulations to the team for your hard work to get these through before the tax year end. For those who are less active on LinkedIn, please try to get involved by liking, commenting and sharing our posts – it really helps to promote the brilliant work we do as a business. 

A focus on our education sector expertise: 

In last month’s Audit service line newsletter, we shone a spotlight on the specialist service we offer to educational trusts.    

The audit and accountancy landscape for Academy Trusts is particularly complex and our team specialises in navigating these complexities. You can read the full feature on this in our Audit monthly newsletter: March Audit newsletter – Affinia Marketing Blog 

Property Tax updates: 

Our Property Tax team provided several useful updates, covering year-end tax planning, a summary guide to Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings (ATED), changes to Multiple Dwellings Relief for Land Transaction Tax, a guide to Furnished Holiday Lettings tax changes and changes to SDLT Nil Rate Threshold. You can view the Property Tax newsletter here: Property Tax March Newsletter – Affinia Marketing Blog 

Private Client Tax updates: 

Our Private Client Tax team updated on some of their recent wins, the promotion of Ashley Stoller to Senior Tax Manager and Holly Heslop to Tax Manager and shared highlights of the services the team can offer our clients. Please view their full update here: An update from the Private Client Tax team – Affinia Marketing Blog 

IT Cyber Security update:  

David and Colin covered some important updates about how we are trying to combat cyber-security threats as a business. This will involve staff training and some simulated phishing emails being sent. If you didn’t catch this update in the Loop, please brief yourself fully here:  IT Update: Enhanced Cyber Security Awareness – Affinia Marketing Blog 

Our IT team also took the opportunity to keep us posted about other initiatives they’re working on, including group telephony, group mobile phone migration to o2 and our acquisition companies IT integration. Please check out their full update here: IT Projects Update – Affinia Marketing Blog 

Digital Solutions & Cloud Accounting update:  

In this month’s update, our Digital Solutions and Cloud Accounting team explored how we can use AI, and in particular Co-Pilot effectively, including some useful dos and don’ts when using AI technology. Please read their newsletter here: Digital Solutions newsletter: Important Tips on AI – Affinia Marketing Blog 

Community 

Baxter & Co’s donation to Bromley Borough Foodbank: 

In February Baxter & Co donated 224.5kg of goods to Bromley Borough Foodbank. Bromley Borough Foodbank is a community-led charity empowering local people and improve their financial independence. Last year they provided emergency food parcels to over 8000 individuals, including over 3000 children, in the local community.   

Thank you to the team at Baxter & Co for their generous donation and continuous support of Bromley Borough Foodbank. 

M&A Masterclass ‘taster’ for Ipswich Thrive Business Week: 

On March 12th, Adam Croft hosted a small workshop at the first Ipswich Thrive Business Week.  

The event was organised by Ipswich Borough Council to serve as a vibrant platform to showcase the town’s dynamic local business community and help foster collaboration opportunities. The event went well and gave Adam the chance to iron out the key themes of interest ahead of our joint client event with Ellisons on March 27th! 

We’d love to hear from you all about your charity and local community endeavours. Please keep us posted!  

That covers the key updates from March. If you have any questions about anything covered here, please get in touch with the head of service line as appropriate.  

Have a great day everyone!