THERE cannot be many shrewd business minds out there who would endorse walking out of a well-paid job in financial services to start your own company immediately upon the discovery that your wife was pregnant with your first child.

And yet, that is exactly what Ross Hunter did back in 2006.

“I’d worked in-house for big financials for about 10 years. It was a lifestyle decision. When my wife got pregnant I thought if I don’t go freelance now I’ll be attached to the corporate life forever.”

Mr Hunter began work as a freelance investment writer, ensuring that his client list was of a suitable size that he could have a life with his children.

The set-up worked well. To a point. “In 2012 I had to make a decision to either scale back or go for it,” he says. “It was becoming more than I could manage alone.”

It would be disingenuous to call Mr Hunter a victim of his own success, but in making the decision to begin hiring and winning business as a fully-fledged company, his vision of a quiet life was quickly forgotten. “I recruited a commercial director and then hired our first staff in February 2013. Now four years on we’re up to more than 60. That’s a lot of recruitment, CVs, people to test.”

Copylab primarily functions as an investment writing service for major investors – its client list includes the likes of Blackrock, Standard Life Investments, Royal London… 18 of the UK’s top 30 largest asset managers in fact.

Its team of writers – split roughly between staff and freelancers – produce market commentary and reports on funds.

More recently, that has evolved into digital copywriting and social media.

What is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Copylab’s ascension is that the gap in such a mature market as fund management existed.

“In a way [the gap] has been filled by in-house teams and a freelance community, but what there hasn’t been is an organised version of the outsourcing model, that can take something like Blackrock and manage their entire client reporting process on three continents.” says Mr Hunter.

Copylab now has more than 40 clients, and offices in London, Vancouver, Singapore and Hong Kong. “At the start of 2016 we didn’t have much overseas presence then one client asked for help in America and that was the trigger for us to think about our growth strategy,” says Mr Hunter.

Mr Hunter realised 80 per cent of his clients were multi-national operators who would typically have regional headquarters in London, New York or Boston, and Singapore or Hong Kong, but in-house asset managers did not communicate with regional colleagues as readily as they perhaps could. The opportunity for expansion had been identified.

“We saw a way to add value to their business. They’re good at getting things done for their own markets but not at seeing that what they’re doing in Hong Kong might be good for their London team,” he explains.

That led to the creation of a Boston office, followed a year later by Singapore.

“I foresaw us getting established in Boston and Singapore and building slowly, but actually because what we do has low investment, you only need a laptop and a person, it’s actually quite easy to scale the business up quickly,” he says.

More recently, the company has embarked on partnerships to gain a regional foothold. In the Middle East it teamed up with Riyadh-based Advent One, and last month launched in Australia through a collaboration with another local business, Lexicon.

These deals allow Copylab to enter a market further forward than a standing start, while its partners can leverage the size of Copylab.

Working with global investment players, Mr Hunter says the uncertainty of Brexit is leading people to defer making investment decisions, or think twice about the UK. But overall, he says, there has not been a major change in strategy among his clients.

“Brexit is close to our doorstep, but there are political issues all around the world,” he says. “In America, in Hong Kong and Singapore, there are political issues that affect business. It’s just become a part of life for business and for investment markets.”

While the company is expanding geographically, Mr Hunter says it remains “absolutely committed to just sticking to financial services” and won’t move into other markets.

But the business is now carrying out more copywriting and social media work in addition to writing reports.

“That’s great for our people as it can be more interesting than 100 fund reports,” he says.

The business is very people intensive, something that Mr Hunter is particularly proud of. “There’s so much talk about FinTech, which is very exciting, but there’s a downside to technology. People can lose their jobs, especially in big banks and insurance companies, so I’m proud that we’re doing something that is not particularly sexy on the tech side but innovatively uses people and is creating jobs in Scotland and elsewhere.”

Mr Hunter said his own role has changed dramatically, and he now only writes about two days a month. “On the whole, we’ve got a big team of great writers who are there to do that work and they’re focused on it,” he says. “I’d like to do more but there’s too much going on with business development and looking after clients and people.”

Even with such a change to how the company operated for so many years, Mr Hunter doesn’t take time to “pat myself on the back”, in his words.

“It’s great, yes, but what’s next? I’m quite impatient and that’s probably one of the things my team would say. Can we not just have a pause for breath here?”

With a growth target of 50 per cent for this year, after posting revenue up 30 per cent to £2.1m last year, that pause for breath is unlikely.

“It’s rapid growth for a business that depends on people. A tech company is more scalable, that [trajectory] is probably nothing, but for a business which is human labour intensive, recruiting and training these people, it’s quite aggressive growth.”