When Graeme McInally first met Margaret Mearns as a young graduate he was caught off guard by her direct and challenging approach.
She had grilled him in a job interview set up by an acquaintance, one he was certain he had not passed successfully.
But Mearns had different ideas and he was invited to join the firm as an administrator.
Now, several years later, he is a director at multi-award winning Mearns & Company, the firm Margaret founded and throughout which much of her vision and legacy is being felt to this day.
It's what makes the firm different, says McInally. "One of our USPs I feel is that Margaret was a teacher before she worked in the financial services industry so [there's] very much an emphasis on communication with clients, a duty of care to clients as well.
"Then she worked for financial services companies [in the early nineties] and what really frustrated Margaret was at that time she felt as though clients weren’t getting a standard of ongoing service.
"But back then Margaret was feeling that if anyone is receiving ongoing fees you need to be providing an ongoing service, so a pioneer and in many ways Margaret was."
Perhaps the most enduring legacy is Mearns' vision of a good culture and the processes she put in place for ensuring standards are high, including peer reviews of all advice for extra protection.
But it was her strive for continuous improvement which made an impression on McInally and which he and his fellow directors continue to live by.
Mearns & Company was founded by Mearns in Edinburgh in 1994, initially as a sole trader and incorporated some 10 years after.
By 2001 there were five people working for the company and these days the business has 26 full time staff working across two areas - the private client and employee benefits sides of the business.
The business is run by a team of four directors - McInally, Graeme Brown and Margaret's son and daughter Malcolm Steel and Catherine Bell - following Mearns' retirement in 2017 and a management buyout in 2022.
The private client side has 500 ongoing review clients (households) which are served across three tiers, depending on their wealth.
The logic behind the firm's client segmentation is the more money that is coming in from the ongoing advice fees, the more service can be provided.
"We segment [clients] on the number of assets that they have because obviously that dictates the amount of income we've got coming into this to do the work," says McInally.
The first service tier, called the annual investment review service, is the most basic offering and covers an annual review of the client's portfolio.
The next level up is the financial planning review service, offering an annual review meeting of the financial plan.
