Lighthouse launches 3-year recruitment drive

Lighthouse Group will recruit eight new advisers every three weeks from now until July 2015, more than doubling the number in its national division Lighthouse Financial Advice.

Speaking to FTAdviser after revealing the company’s interim results, Malcolm Streatfield, chief executive of Lighthouse, said: “The seven recruiting managers that we’ve now taken on board on a retaining basis are out there to recruit eight new advisers into our national every single three weeks between now and July 2015.

“That will build for us in our national division 500 serving advisers three years out from now in that division alone.”

If the company meets that goal it will more than double its current adviser cohort and make up for the 105 advisers who left the company in the first half of this year, mostly from the subsuming of subsidiary Financial Services and Support into the body of the parent company and from natural attrition in the approach of the Retail Distribution Review.

About 100 more advisers left the company in 2011.

As well as investing in recruitment, the company will for the first time develop and launch a panel of researched platforms for advisers.

Mr Streatfield said: “We’ve done a whole project this year of in-depth research of what’s available in the market which will narrow itself down to a panel of fully-researched fund solutions which will be available for all of our advisers to use to make them more efficient out in the field.”

Lighthouse Adviser Solutions is set to launch in January 2013, and will be available to Lighthouse’s national, network and specialist divisions.

Mr Streatfield continued: “This is all in anticipation of getting ourselves in good shape for RDR so everybody can work using technology to its maximum and work fast and efficiently with the solutions that are already researched, cutting out huge requirements for individual advisers to do in-depth research on product ranges because it will be there and done for them.”