CompaniesJun 29 2016

Firing line: Richard Wilson

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Many have witnessed, over the last few years, the changing dynamics of financial need and education, with employers taking on more responsibility for their staff’s financial futures.

It was with this in mind that last year, international professional services company Marsh & McLennan bought Jelf Group, a national financial adviser business with 37 branches around the UK, and 70 staff in total.

Now the dust has settled on the deal, the business has been restructured, so that the financial planning arm of Jelf has merged with the financial planning business of Mercer, a division of Marsh & McLennan.

Overseeing this new team, called Mercer Jelf Financial Planning, is Richard Wilson, partner and commercial leader of Mercer’s consumer business. One of his most recent moves has been to appoint Grant Hughes, a former Barclays Wealth executive, as leader of the combined business.

The rest of the original Jelf business has been merged with Marsh, a sister company to Mercer, and is overseen by new chief executive Phil Barton. Former Jelf chief executive Alex Alway, is now a non-executive director.

Mr Wilson said: “Our consumer strategy has been developed from a global perspective. We’ve had some success in Australia and healthcare and wealth management, and the UK was identified as the next key market.

“As we have seen in recent years, various responsibilities have been passed from government to employers, and employers to employees. Employees find themselves in the position of having a wide range of issues to sort out and manage in their lives, and that’s creating a lot of noise.

“We’ve got the capability to make their lives easier and make their decisions easier. Initially, our intention is take our services through the employers.”

Mercer has a big corporate client bank in the UK, with employers offering all kinds of employee benefits. The aim is to make use of this with the Jelf financial planning business, and position it, as Mercer Jelf Financial Planning, as the go-to service for personal financial advice.

Mr Wilson said: “We’ve seen an increased trend from our employer clients to provide more financial advice to their employees, because they recognise that more responsibility has been passed on to their employees.”

Issues such as the pension freedoms and more responsibility for one’s finances have meant the financial world for employees has become more complex, and there is more need for financial advice.

Mr Wilson added: “Employers are recognising they need to provide that more for their employees.”

Jelf Financial Planning was chosen by Marsh & McLennan, Mr Wilson said, because “they had been on a journey in developing their financial planning capability.

“They’re also quite advanced in making some of their back office and processes more efficient, and they’re more able to deal with scale and volume. It was really those areas that were the key thing that made the difference to us.”

Mercer Jelf now has 100 staff with 2,500 clients operating in the original Jelf offices in the West Country, and now the Mercer business in London, the north of England and Edinburgh.

The core services will be focused on offering a financial health check, financial advice – in the shape of more event-driven advice – or retained wealth management, defined as a “holistic” financial planning service. The business holds chartered financial planner status, and many advisers have chartered status.

The strategy at Mercer Jelf is to focus the brand on the consumer space, and part of this plan is the development of the Mercer Harmonise platform. This is a direct-to-consumer platform that allows people to assess their financial position.

Offered in the workplace, the platform, which can be used by either small and medium enterprises or large corporates, focuses on “health and wealth”, bringing together employees’ various savings policies, and helping them plan their day-to-day finances.

Mr Wilson said: “We’ve got the capability to map out all of their spending, so they can better plan and manage their finances, and use that information to make better decisions about their future.

“Many people when they’re saving for their future, they need to know how much they can afford. They generally don’t know because they haven’t done that detailed planning.”

The platform is not a robo-adviser, however, although Mercer Jelf is looking quite closely at this trend.

Mr Wilson said: “This is an area that’s more relevant to the masses, and it’s an area that will really help us bring that capability to the masses, but you have to make sure you get the right proposition.

“Will it replace the financial planning market? We definitely don’t see that happening in the medium term, with such a complex financial advice market.”

On other more prosaic issues, Mercer Jelf has decided to follow the restricted advice model.

Mr Wilson said: “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain independent and survive as a business. The cost of regulation and processes and systems to go alongside a fully independent model are very difficult to bear, and have too much of an impact on the cost of advice.

“Restricted is a model that serves the market well, and enables us to bring the services to the market at an affordable level.”

Melanie Tringham is features editor at Financial Adviser

Biography: Richard Wilson

2003–2005: Head of customer service for group risk division, Aegon UK

Prior to 2003: Various managerial roles around Aegon’s group pensions division

2005–2007: Leader of employee benefits consulting and broking (North), Mercer Aegon

2007–2014: Leader of Elect, Mercer’s UK SME Employee Benefits Business, and global SME leader

2014–Present: Leader of UK Consumer Business, Mercer