There are no tower cranes involved, but KPMG has been doing a bit of construction — or more correctly restructuring — to its business in the past few months.

It has created an all-new, fully integrated advisory service offering that brings together its risk management, financial, actuarial and IT advisory sections into one entity.

Named KPMG Advisory Limited, it is a custom-built advisory service for the 21st century, that gets away from the segmented approach of the past.

As one of Bermuda's leading financial services firms KPMG says it is responding to, and building on, the needs of clients.

Why the change?

It comes down to three things; responding to customer needs, giving a customised service for each individual client, and integrating the four departments into a cohesive and responsive single team.

KPMG can take its more diverse client team out to see a client who may have problems to solve but not know exactly what services they require. The all-in-one advisory team can then create a customised solution for the client.

Put simply it is a way of getting a client to understand their needs without approaching things, as happened in the past, with a "bucket" approach of segmented teams working individually.

Four dedicated advisory managing directors will oversee the single team of nearly 40 professionals who are skilled and qualified in their own sectors, but can now work more collaboratively and create stronger synergy.

"We are combining our services on our non-audit side from three to one. KPMG has always had audit, tax and advisory. But under advisory we had risk advisory services, financial advisory services and our actuaries," explains Ohna deBruin, managing director and risk and business process specialist.

In this way KPMG is organising around business issues rather than service lines.

"We have not reinvented the wheel. We have simply taken the best people, their experience and proven methodologies and consolidated them to allow us to identify our clients' risk and opportunities faster and offer stronger solutions," said Ms deBruin. "Clients are no longer looking for off-the-shelf solutions, they expect innovation, value and customised solutions and that is what we can deliver.

"Prior to the integration, our service offerings were divided into two distinct and very separate areas; transactions — which dealt with issues such as, mergers and acquisitions, financing, restructuring and forensics — and process — which looked at internal controls, risk assessment, operational controls and process improvement. By combining the multiple departments into one, we're physically bringing people together so we can now offer our clients a much broader and thorough perspective."

An example of the benefits a more diverse use of advisory service resources brings was a company that wanted KPMG to advise on a number of IT challenges.

But it soon became clear the challenges were also caused by a condition rooted outside of IT that related to corporate governance in general. A pure IT review would have identified opportunities for the IT group to address most of their challenges, but the more holistic approach results in wider organisational issues being considered too.

Malcolm Butterfield, managing director and practice leader, said: "KPMG is very excited about the creation of KPMG Advisory, which we view as a forward thinking approach to traditional advisory services. Market trends and client demand have evolved considerably over a short period of time and in keeping with our overall business philosophy, KPMG has responded by realigning our people to meet the challenge.

"By integrating local and world-wide advisory services, we can meet our clients' challenges in the global marketplace."