Over the course of our Adviser Market research we have encountered many different types of advisers with varying approaches to the business of giving advice. We think that segmentation based on geography or size of firm is limited and challenge platforms and asset managers to think more creatively about the approach and profile of the advice firms they work with. This was our motivation for creating these seven personas – which we hope broadly represents a diversity of financial advisers.

Platforum’s adviser personas are light-hearted portraits of the spectrum of UK advisers using data collected by us, Lucian Camp’s witty profiles and Martin Cunningham’s striking cartoons. We have selected three personas to share with you today and will be discussing these in more depth at Platforum 2017, our annual conference held in October. No doubt many of their characteristics will be familiar to many of you. If you are an adviser who identifies with any of these personas, please get in touch. We would like to hear your story.

Family Officers

We don’t really think of ourselves as financial advisers, we’re something much closer to the European style of Family Office. No, I’m sorry, I really can’t say anything at all about our clients, absolute discretion is the watchword of a firm like this, all I can say is that our clients are extremely affluent but also reclusive individuals who demand complete confidentiality and superlative levels of service.

For example, just the other day I had to travel out to an extremely exclusive small, private Caribbean island with some papers requiring my client’s signature, and just to give you an idea of the kind of service we provide he asked if I wouldn’t mind bringing out a few more woolly jumpers because the evenings are getting a little chilly.

Life Coaches

You see, we call ourselves financial planners, but that’s just the very small tip of a very big iceberg really. Actually, we’re psychologists, therapists, life coaches – the important part of the job is helping our clients discover who they really are and where they’re really trying to get to.

Personally I was just another IFA until I went to California and spent a month literally sitting at the feet of the great Henry Katzenjammer, do you know him, he’s a true legend? Yes, to your average investment adviser the Katzenjammer technique seems radical, especially the all-night hot tub meditation sessions, but it makes such a difference when clients are really in touch with their inner selves and truly understand what they want to achieve in this life. That’s what they’re paying me for, which is probably just as well in the light of the investment performance they’ve been getting over the last few years.

Team Leaders

You know those film stars at the Oscars and the BAFTAS who have to thank a list of people a mile long when they win, well, that’s me really. Back at base there are not far short of a dozen in the team doing the work that I bring in for them. I’m the one who’s out and about – six appointments a day, minimum, which is a challenge in itself for my Diary Secretary, three clients and three prospects ideally. So needless to say it’s not a good use of my time to crunch through all the fact-find, or develop the advice, or, God forbid, deal with the providers.

I’m deeply grateful to all the boys and girls on the team who make all that happen, not least of course my Briefcase Secretary who makes sure that all the papers I need are packed, in order, in my case every morning. And of course all the boys and girls on the team are equally grateful – or perhaps a little bit more so – to me.