Simon Chamberlain, chief executive of Succession Advisory Services, has revealed to FTAdviser that his latest venture, Succession Wealth Management, will be formed of two entities that will respectively offer independent and restricted advice.
In a video interview, Mr Chamberlain unveiled the latest developments in response to questioning over how the new business, which will be formed from the acquisition of five businesses this year, would fit in with the new advice definitions under the Retail Distribution Review.
He said: “One [organisation] would be Succession Wealth Management itself, which will be a purely investment business. It will not deal in protection or mortgages, it will only deal in investments in excess of £100,000.
“That business will be restricted, not because of its investment process but because it does not sell investment products or mortgage products.
“Succession Financial Management [the second entity] will be more of a transactional arm to deliver those kind of services.
“It was always part of our Succession Advisory Services plan to start transitioning the businesses that we bought through from being commission-based and transactional all the way to being service led and fee-based.
“Those five firms have their change of control forms in with the FSA and obviously we are waiting on their response before we go ahead to the next stage.”
He said Succession Advisory Services would continue to provide a consulting service to its member firms, showing people how to move to a new model advice, while Succession Wealth Management would become the advisory brand.
Mr Chamberlain said: “We are very keen to portray a view to the public and product providers, to the FSA, to the whole industry, that we need to move away from this word ‘distributor’.
“Distributor tends to mean you are the third party selling somebody else’s products. Succession Wealth Management will be selling advice. It will be an advisory brand.”
Click here to view the full interview.
