Openwork has seen its pre-tax profits surge to £3.8m up from the £300,000 the group posted for 2013.
The previous year (2012), Openwork posted its first ever profit of £600,000, following a £13m loss in 2011 which was mostly down to £7m of exceptional costs incurred through a restructuring.
Earlier this month, Openwork announced another “radical” restructure of its distribution business in an attempt to further build profitability, with the division of three distinct business units – wealth, mortgage and protection.
The network also tripled its operating profit to £5.5m during 2014, an increase of more than 230 per cent on 2013, when it posted a profit of £1.7m.
The latest annual results confirmed three consecutive years of profitability, after making significant losses in the years following its inception in 2005.
The network grew its revenue by more than 5 per cent last year, on the back of several major changes to the business, including a deal to take on hundreds of protection advisers from MetLife, which boosted wider network numbers to around 3,000.
Openwork’s range of multi-asset model portfolios, comprising sector funds managed on a mandate basis by asset managers including Schroders, Jupiter and Threadneedle, attracted nearly £1bn of new investment in the course of 2014, despite only launching in February. The assets in Omnis overall now exceed £2.5bn.
Chief executive Mark Duckworth said the turnaround in profit over recent years is testament to both the strength of the enhanced proposition and the hard work advisers across the network.
“With the enhancements we have made to our proposition, we have a fantastic base from which to grow the business while helping our advisers continue to deliver the highest standards of advice to their customers.”
The Openwork Group is owned – by ordinary shares – 67.5 per cent by its advisers, 7.5 per cent by its employees and 25 per cent by global insurer Zurich.
peter.walker@ft.com
