The race for scale appears to be on within the wealth management space. Following news that Rathbones has acquired Scotland’s largest independent wealth manager, Speirs & Jeffrey, questions arise about how else wealth managers are looking – and can look – to build scale. The deal will reportedly add £6.7bn to Rathbones’s year-end £39.1bn AUM figure.
This is a strategic acquisition to build scale – not too dissimilar to what we have seen in the platform space in recent years with Aegon and Standard Life. So how can traditional wealth managers deliver accelerated growth? Although some of the key players may be well known within the financial services industry, many are not necessarily the biggest household names.
Many wealth managers will be satisfied with the status quo, but one eye needs to look to the future and where the next generation of investors will come from. Whether this is a lighter-touch service such as that offered by Investec Click & Invest or UBS SmartWealth, wealth managers will need to reassess their strategies to capture the attention of tomorrow’s clients.
Old Mutual Wealth seems to have figured out a plan. Communicating the rebrand of Quilter to the public is already well underway – rugby fans would have seen England triumph in May’s Quilter Cup.
Others don’t seem to have quite got there yet. Standard Life Aberdeen have all the puzzle pieces – advice, platform, wealth management, asset management – but although it’s a large vertically integrated machine, it’s perhaps not yet a well-oiled one.
Wealth managers with over 100 years of history such as Brewin Dolphin, Charles Stanley and Tilney have gained traction with financial advisers and their core target audiences of wealthier individuals, but the question now is whether they can achieve wider appeal.
You can find out more about how financial advisers are using DFMs’ and wealth managers’ model portfolios in our UK Fund Distribution – Model Portfolios on Platform report. Get in touch to enquire about the report.