New chief executive of Sanlam UK plans to turn the company into a “significant player” in Britain’s financial services industry - and is willing to close offices to do so.
Jonathan Polin, who took on the role at the beginning of this month and has a reputation for restructuring companies, has admitted there will be change at Sanlam, but said he is still finalising these plans.
“Globally Sanlam is a huge business, but in the UK it is not that big. Let us be honest, it is not a well known brand.
“There is no point in Sanlam playing around in the UK, because the profits we would derive from it wouldn’t even touch the sides.
“It has to aim to be a significant player in the UK. You don’t do that overnight and that has got to be built, but Sanlam are believers in the long game.”
Mr Polin stepped down as chief executive and left Ashcourt Rowan last year as part of the Towry deal.
He spent nearly four years at the firm, transforming it from a loss-making entity with a market cap of £22m to a business worth £129m.
He had previously been sales and marketing director at Ignis, involved in the company’s transformation from Britannic, including the creation of its boutiques.
One of his first changes since arriving at Sanlam has been to bring the company’s UK businesses under the management remit of a single corporate entity, forming Sanlam UK, a group with combined assets under management and influence of nearly £9bn.
Mr Polin said: “It has been a very difficult business to understand and it took me a long time to understand what on earth was here. By bringing everything into one company we will give a clearer focus.
“It would be wrong for me to play out where I think the strategy for the business is going after less than a month,” he continued, adding that “the reality is there will be change, because there always is when a new chief executive arrives”.
The company will seek to grow by acquisition, but only where it was “correct and sensible”, with no imminent plans to do so, said Mr Polin, who pointed out that acquisitions are “by their very nature opportunistic”.
Mr Polin also addressed the issue of Sanlam’s review of its offices in Rhyl and Worcester. “As part of the acquisition of Buckles a number of years ago their back office processes were centred around Rhyl,” he explained.
“There is also a big operational base with a life company in Bristol and there was no economic justification for having both. We are in the process of completing that migration at the moment and should be finished in the next couple of months.”
Meanwhile, Sanlam is set to re-launch its regional office in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, initially delivering financial planning and wealth management services to existing private clients in the region.
This news came after a week of comings and goings for the firm, with Jeremy Gibson moving up to chief executive of Sanlam Investments & Pensions, while Steven Haines and Alfio Tagliabue came in as group chief operating officer and group chief financial officer respectively, having both previously worked for Mr Polin at Ashcourt Rowan.
Sanlam UK’s chief executive Lukas van der Walt also announced he was moving on as part of the firm’s ongoing integration and management restructure.
