End of year financial results revealed

DWF, the global provider of integrated legal and business services, has announced its financial results for the year ending April 30.

Jon Stevens, managing partner of DWF in Birmingham, said: "This year in Birmingham, we have made strategic investments in our people and technology, which has been pivotal. 

"We have enhanced the services we offer to clients through our new global sports sector, led by Birmingham's very own Toby Askin while Melanie Williams has taken over leading our Real Estate Global Practice Area.

"Our culture of inclusivity and dedication to nurturing talent has led to excellent trainee retention rates. These results reflect the hard work and dedication of all of our people, who I am immensely proud to lead. We remain focused on maintaining this momentum, a culture of success, and delivering exceptional services to our clients."

Highlights of the financial results globally include:

• Net revenue increased by 14%, from £380m to £435m
• All three divisions achieved increases in net revenue

Sir Nigel Knowles, chief executive officer of DWF, said: "This is an excellent performance for our business and provides further evidence that our integrated legal management approach is helping us win with our clients. We have achieved continued profitable growth despite macroeconomic uncertainty, which is testament to the exceptional service our colleagues provide, and the trust placed in them by our clients.”

Other group highlights this year:

• Insurance Services saw the fastest growth at 24%, driven in part by the successful addition of Whitelaw Twining in Canada. Commercial Services grew by 8% organically, despite a challenging transactional market, while Legal Operations also grew by 8%.
• DWF secured more than 30 legal panel appointments or reappointments including with BT, Tesco, Aspen Insurance and Cadent Gas Limited.
• Our Net Promoter Score, an industry benchmark of how likely our clients are to recommend us to others, increased from +62 to +67.
• We promoted 33 colleagues to partner, or to a higher career level within our partnership structure. In total, more than 220 colleagues were promoted across the business in our January promotions.
• In addition to our internal promotions, we made a further 25 lateral hires at partner level.

Knowles added: "This past financial year was marked by the completion of our take-private transaction with Inflexion. At the time, we said that Inflexion's investment would help us to go faster in the pursuit of our strategic goals and we are already seeing that come true.

"In recent weeks we announced our first M&A transaction since the Inflexion investment with the intended acquisition of leading Australian claims management business, Proclaim. This transaction will scale our global Claims Management and Adjusting team to 320 colleagues across nine jurisdictions, and further demonstrates our commitment to expanding our footprint in key global markets.

"We have also kicked off the next stage of our digital transformation programme with a significant investment programme which includes the roll out of AI tool, Microsoft Copilot, to all of our colleagues globally. I am encouraged by the start the group has made to the new financial year and we anticipate further expansion-driven corporate activity in 2024."