Consultancy
Advice from people who've sat on your side of the desk.
We're Chartered finance and insurance professionals who direct the work rather than hand it off, bringing hands-on London Market experience to everything we do. It's the judgement that sits over all our technical work, and a standalone advisory practice in its own right.
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Why we are different
The people you meet are the people who do the work.
Most consultancies sell you a methodology, then send junior analysts to run it.
At Horizons, the people whose names are on the door are the ones who do the work: Chartered accountants and insurance professionals who spent careers inside London Market finance teams, and who build the technology themselves.
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We know your close because we've run it. Bordereaux, month end, Solvency II, and the regulatory returns are work we've done under deadline, not topics we've read about.
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We build what we scope. The person who understands your reporting is the one writing the automation, so nothing is lost handing a spec to developers who have never seen a syndicate ledger.
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First conversation to final handover. The people in the room when we scope it are the people who deliver it. There is no second-string delivery team.
One Team
Three disciplines
Business & Finance
We're Chartered accountants, so we understand how a finance function actually runs, from the daily reality of a close to the controls and reporting that sit on top of it. We can read your process and your numbers at the same time, see where the time is being lost and where the risk is building up, and tell the difference between a problem that needs new technology and one that only needs a better process. That means our recommendations are grounded in how finance teams work rather than in whatever tool is currently in fashion, and we can talk to your CFO or finance manager as peers who have done the job, not as outsiders learning it on your time.
Insurance
Our experience runs right across the London Market, not just its finance teams. We've worked in underwriting and in claims, we understand how Lloyd's actually operates, and we know the finance and reporting side that ties it all together. That breadth matters, because problems in this market rarely sit neatly in one function: a bordereaux issue is also a data issue, a claims question becomes a reserving and reporting question, and delegated authority touches all of it. When we suggest a way forward we know it has to fit the realities of underwriting, claims, the close and Solvency II alike, rather than an idealised version of any of them. You spend the first meeting talking about the work, not explaining the market to us.
Projects
Knowing the right thing to do is only half of it; knowing what it takes to make it happen is the other half. Having run finance and insurance change projects, we can tell you honestly what a piece of work will actually involve, where the effort really sits, and how long it will take once the real world gets in the way. We know the ways these projects quietly go wrong: scope that widens a little at a time, a solution that works on paper but nobody adopts, a plan that looks tidy until year-end lands in the middle of it. That experience shapes the advice we give, so you go in with a realistic view of the cost, the risk and the sequence, whether your own team takes it forward or you bring in someone to deliver.
Scoped to fit
How an engagements runs.
The First Conversation
We start by listening. You tell us what's slow, risky or frustrating, and we ask the questions that only come from having done the job: how your close actually runs, where the numbers come from, what the market or the regulator expects of you. Because we already know the domain, this is a working conversation, not an education. Often we can point to the likely causes before we've looked under the bonnet.
Understanding the problem
Next we get into the detail: the process as it really operates, the data behind it, the controls, the workarounds people have quietly built to keep things moving. We're reading your finance and your operations at the same time, so we can separate the real problem from its symptoms and tell the difference between something that needs new technology and something that only needs a better process.
The Recommendation
We come back with a clear, honest view: what's worth doing, what isn't, and in what order. Where technology is the right answer, we tell you which kind and why; where it isn't, we say so rather than sell you a project. You get the trade-offs, a realistic sense of effort and risk, and a sequence that fits around your close and your calendar rather than cutting across them.
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When you take it forward, we stay involved as much or as little as you need: shaping the work, keeping it honest against the original goal, and steering governance, vendors and stakeholders so the thing that gets built is the thing you agreed to. Whether your own team delivers it or you bring in someone to do the work, our knowledge stays with the project rather than walking out after the pitch.
We carry it through.
Where consultancy meets the build.
When the answer involves technology
Our advisory practice stands on its own. But when the right answer runs into systems, data or automation, we're unusually placed to take it from recommendation to working solution on the Microsoft platform, without handing you to anyone else. The thinking and the building come from the same people.
Get started!
Bring us one connection that drains your week, the export you rebuild every month, the figures you rekey between two systems, the app that never talks to the rest, and we'll show you what it looks like flowing on its own.
Built and run by chartered professionals, the people who'll do the work, not a sales team.