Sense Network has appointed Philip Bray as its development manager to drive new member acquisitions next year.
He moved from being marketing manager at Investment Sense, and will now be tasked with bringing on board 20 advisory firms during the course of 2015.
Tim Newman, managing director at Sense, told FTAdviser that in the last few years Mr Bray has developed his PR and social media skills, which will be very valuable in his new role.
“One of the primary tasks is to help us grow the business by attracting high calibre additional members. We’re sat here with 77 appointed representative firms at the moment and we’re looking to grow that towards 100 by the end of next year.
“It’s accelerating growth a little bit, we’re not trying to go on some land grab or grow exponentially, but the timing seems good to capitalise on the situation we’ve developed to date and attract a higher number of firms than we did this year.”
Mr Newman was keen to stress that a ‘quality over quantity’ mantra had not changed with next year’s drive for new business.
“If we can’t find 20 businesses we want to work with next year, that’s fine. But Phil adds spoken capacity in terms of having dialogue with potential members, it’s not about diluting the standards, just casting the net a little wider.”
The network was founded in 2007 and has grown to an annual turnover of £18.7m, with pre-tax profits at the end of September up 53 per cent to £647,000. Its number of advisers at 31 May 2014 had also increased by 13 per cent over the year to 198.
peter.walker@ft.com
