Whenever Stephen Gazard, managing director of Sesame Bankhall Group, goes out and about, he is often mistaken for that other Stephen Gazzard, interim chief executive of the Institute of Financial Planning.
But the Sesame man arguably has the tougher job. His firm was hit by a £6m fine last year by the FCA, losses were £9.3m at the last annual results and, not the least of it, his parent company, Friends Life, is trying to sell the business.
Yet he remains surprisingly calm about things. He said: “The job is to run the business. Ownership comes and goes – Friends Life are a hugely supportive parent company – they have been hugely supportive to us as an executive.”
Mr Gazard had his responsibilities as managing director extended at the start of this year following the surprise departure of George Higginson. On this he is also equanimous, saying: “People make their own career choices as to whether they want to be in an organisation or not.”
But Sesame has been undergoing a longer transformation over the past three years. Mr Gazard, who became managing director in 2013, after five months as distribution director, has been directly involved with a process that prompted much resistance, when the company decided to go restricted, after being independent and latterly offering a choice.
The actual result was that only certain more “esoteric” products were to be excluded, namely VCTs and EISs. He said: “In 2013, we wrote 32 cases that represented those cases that they can’t do now.
“There was a lot of speculation with regards to what ‘restricted’ meant. A lot of people thought that meant we were going to restrict them to a panel of providers, and the proposition would exclude some mainstream product areas, but they actually have access to a huge range of product providers.”
In a sense, many have wondered whether the network model has a long-term future – the rise of the support service company has meant more advisers can get a good service without all the commitments of belonging to a network.
But Mr Gazard said he has seen some advisers move from the network model to the directly authorised model, as well as movement the other way. But the company is also planning for the future by focusing much of its executive energy on Bankhall, the support service division.
Mr Gazard said: “The Bankhall business is by far the larger part of our group supporting nearly 2000 firms – it’s where my day-to-day focus is.”
There have been a number of changes to the business, including putting in a “focused” account management team, and the operations have been restructured to reflect the different nature of a support services business.
But the network still has a future, he said. “The model around the advisory proposition stands up on its own merits. Our own model is a mixture of regular fee income, plus a revenue-based collection on an individual firm basis but that revenue collection is agnostic as to whether it’s commission or adviser charging or fee.”
Mr Gazard came into Sesame from Lighthouse Group, another advisory business that has a mixed model – including a network and a national financial adviser business.
But before he joined the big names, he was an IFA himself, spending 10 years actively in the market advising.
He said: “It’s given me a unique position within the marketplace. I’ve always been the one on the board saying ‘This is how advisers will react’. I will insist on spending one day a week out with firms understanding what their issues are, what we need to do to support them.”
But perhaps front of his mind is profitability. The last set of results were plunged into a loss of £9.3m due to that FCA fine, down from profits of £4.1m the previous year.
He said: “We’ve been very clear as a board and executive. We are the largest in the marketplace, we’re robustly capitalised, and we face up to these issues and carry on. We’ve got the support of the parent company.
“It’s about running a robust business going forward and to make sure that we recruit the right people and retain a relationship with the right people. We have the ability to not shy away from ensuring that we drive the right consumer outcomes and continue to do that.”
Mr Gazard’s drive has been applied outside the office, where he has become the vice-chairman of Meningitis Now, a charity that is trying to find a vaccine against the disease.
The challenge for everyone is that the symptoms look a lot like other, less serious diseases, but once it definitely looks like meningitis – it is often too late.
Mr Gazard became involved after his daughter contracted the disease at 14 weeks, and spent some time in a coma. Luckily for the family they lived directly opposite a hospital and were able to get there in five minutes.
Mr Gazard said: “It’s a great leveller; it puts a huge amount of what we do in perspective.” For the man at the helm of a company going through change, it probably does give a certain amount of perspective.
Melanie Tringham is features editor of Financial Adviser
CV
2013 - present Sesame Bankhall Group, distribution director then managing director
2011/2013 Lighthouse Group, managing director Lighthouse Advisory Services
2006/2013 Falcon Group, managing director
1997/2006 Kilminster Group, development director
1995/1997 Prudential Private Financial Planning Service
1990/1997 Various private enterprises
