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Preparing for RDR: George Higginson, Sesame Bankhall
For Sesame Bankhall 2012 will be about bedding in what has already been launched and launching what has already been announced.
Having enjoyed a strong January in terms of recruitment and a solid 2011 in terms of performance, you could forgive Sesame Bankhall for being bullish on the year ahead.
Instead, George Higginson, chief executive of the intermediary giant, discusses his plans to consolidate the performance of the group.
Thus he says that the company would be undertaking fewer big launches that advisers may have become accustomed to in the coming year, though it is working on a project now that will pull together technology allowing advisers to submit a single form to achieve multiple general insurance quotes.
Speaking exclusively to FTAdviser, Mr Higginson he says: “2012 will be more of a year of following through on the things we have already announced.”
People want to be in the right place for the post-RDR world - there is no point being with a company that is stuck on just one thing
However Mr Higginson, says he would also consider doing further deals like the one currently being finalised with estate agency Connells. The agreement, signed last year, will offer protection for the company’s 450 mortgage consultants.
Mr Higginson says he had been approached about a few similar deals but adds there was “nothing as big as Connells” in the pipeline.
Performance
So what can Friends Life, which owns the intermediary that made it to the top of Finanical Adviser’s Top 100 rankings for the seventh time last year, expect from Sesame Bankhall in 2012?
Ahead of Friends Life revealing its results next month, Mr Higginson says he had to remain fairly tight lipped about the impact the intermediary would have on the provider’s balance sheet, but is able to confirm the year had started well with the intermediary making “a reasonable profit”.
He said: “We were very open and able to say that we wanted to reinvest the profits we had now to make us fighting fit for the future. Profits are ahead of plan but down on a year ago as we have been re-investing. But we have not got any debt.
“It has been a strong year operationally for us. Productivity per adviser is up. Profits are going back up again.”
Adviser numbers
With the Retail Distribution Review deadline less than 11 months away, Mr Higginson says the intermediary has built up its recruitment team to make sure adviser numbers were the same at the end of this year – if not slightly higher – than at the end of 2011.
Sesame Bankhall currently has about 2,300 members of its network. And Mr Higginson says that in January the group saw 100 individual advisers join and become authorised to write business, the biggest number to join the intermediary in a single month since 2004.
According to Mr Higginson, these advisers are not shifting from direct authorisation to a network model and some those left out in the cold following Co-operative’s decision to pulls its advice channel in July 2011.
