"[It's] very, very structured from that point of view. But obviously [there's also] a lot of general chat about the personal relationship side of things," says McInally.
In the lowest tier clients will receive an annual investment review and the offer of a chat to discuss any questions they may have about their portfolio.
All clients also have access to an online portal, which allows them to see how their portfolio is performing and receive and send documents securely.
But it has not always been like that. The introduction of the consumer duty has forced Mearns & Co to adapt its processes and this has introduced commercial pressure.
McInally says: "Up until last year the clients with the smallest portfolios that we manage we didn't do a review for them every year. It was perhaps every two years or three years, whatever the charges could cover.
"Of course with consumer duty a change we made is that we need to be reviewing our clients' portfolios at least once a year. So that was where we had to adapt the process."
Mearns & Company is proud of its legacy. Its approach has served it well to date, it has won multiple industry awards for its service, client engagement, website, firm to work for among others.
But it doesn't like to rest on its laurels. It continually strives to make improvements, find new ways of working, better processes, after all "if you're standing still you're going backwards aren't you in our industry," says McInally.
Most recently the firm has been trying to figure out a process whereby it can serve its smaller clients in a way that is commercially viable.
It charges all clients 0.75 per cent of assets under management up to £1mn and 0.25 per cent above that.
"We’ve refined the process [of serving them]," McInally says. "We now just need to work more efficiently to try and make that commercially viable because clearly with a client with 10,000 pounds under management that is not going to cover the cost of reviewing the portfolio once a year.
"So that's a challenge of course. When you're trying to give advice that is tailored for clients' specific objectives you can't really centralise too much because clearly you won't be doing that.
"So that's the challenge that we face now."
carmen.reichman@ft.com
