Mike Coady, managing director of DeVere UK, has hit back at critics of his business, while a spoof website of his business has been removed.
As previously reported by FTAdviser sister publication Financial Adviser, the DeVere Group plans to take legal action against the creators of a site that portrays itself as part of deVere.
The site contains a long list of criticism against the way the firm operates, accusing DeVere of excessive charges and aggressive sales tactics.
Mr Coady told FTAdviser that the site popped up in the last few days and he was legally restricted as to what he could talk about in relation to his concerns about the spoof web pages.
Mr Coady said when he left his office in the City at 9.45am on Wednesday (24 June) morning the site had been taken down after DeVere UK’s lawyers approached the site’s creators.
When asked what did he have to say to the creator’s of gripe sites that have appeared online in the past making comments about the way DeVere operates, Mr Coady said “you have to balance it”.
Mr Coady said: “We are in 70 or 80 different countries. We take on hundreds of new clients each and every week and they are very high net worth, director-type entrepreneurial clients.
“From time to time we have to deal with (criticism) particular of this nature. We sometimes believe, or most of the time believe, that it comes from a competitor or ex-member of staff.
“International financial advice can be of that nature, which is not indicative of the UK-type of adviser which perhaps is more mature and more grown up and more professional.”
When asked what can a client expect from a DeVere UK adviser, Mr Coady said: “The way we operate internationally is no different from the way we operate in the UK.
“I believe we have the highest standards of any international financial advisory brokerages. So, for example, we make sure they (advisers) have had the full training.
“It is interesting when you look at something like the spoof site when they make claims of 15 per cent charges (because) the reality is DeVere do not take any charges or make any charges apart from places perhaps like the UK or the US that work on a sort of 1 per cent servicing-type model.
“Internationally we use products from the likes of Legal and General, Prudential and Skandia and all those products have standard, off the shelf, retail product charges that would be consistent with all brokerages or banks that they use.
“Those institutions (because they have not had to employ any of their own financial advisers) all they do in essence is share with us a proportion of the charges that they charge the client direct.”
emma.hughes@ft.com
