His comments are well-timed considering that just last week, while dubbing the Retail Distribution Review a “disaster”, think-tank fellow Michael Johnson argued that advisers are really only that, dubbing them “first and foremost distributors and not advisers”.
If you are looking for a firm that breaks that mould, Mr Coury’s Bath-based Money Wise IFA is a pretty good example.
If what he says is true, Mr Coury’s Money Wise IFAs are about as far from the product-hucking commission-hungry animals the RDR sought to wipe out as you can get.
On top of selling products - which is pretty hard to get away from as an adviser - Money Wise also works with solicitor firms and accountants to make sure their clients get everything they need financially and legally.
“We aren’t a product distribution business, we are a professional financial advice business.
“I hate the term distributor because the product manufacturers refer to our sector as distribution and it’s a term I absolutely loathe. We aren’t a distributor of your products and services, we provide financial advice.”
I hate the term distributor because the product manufacturers refer to our sector as distribution - we aren’t a distributor of your products and servicesSnapshot
Mr Coury founded Money Wise in 1997 in Bath, where it is still based.
He started small: at first it was just him and his wife. A year later a couple of ex-colleagues joined the firm.
The company has expanded since then and now has offices in London, Bournemouth and Cambridge, with 14 total advisers and boasting revenues of more than £3m a year.
Although the Bath business still accounts for around half of the company’s total revenues, Mr Coury is hoping to expand the London and Bournemouth over the next 18 months or so. This includes taking on a few more “top quality advisers”.
“We aren’t likely to acquire businesses. We are looking for top talent; people who are producing north of £200,000 a year in fee income and typically chartered. Maybe their existing firm isn’t as RDR ready as we are...”
Considering Mr Coury was one of the founding members and former board member of the Ascentric wrap platform it comes as no surprise most of his firm’s assets are held there, with only just over 10 per cent being held on other platforms.
New ventures
Expansion into the cities is not the only avenue of growth for Money Wise IFA, which has recently launched two specialist propositions and is in the process of launching another.
The two existing offerings are for workplace pensions and personal injury, and the new joint venture being launched in partnership with Stone King Solicitors does what it says on the tin: Care Planning Services.
“It’s very broad-based, it isn’t just about legal and financial services. It’s almost like a on stop shop for needing help to plan for later life care, it’s very much service orientated.
“We work a lot with solicitors in the sense that we like to work with other professional advisers to take a more joined-up approach. We do a lot of work with solicitors and they refer work to us.
Keep it local
The firm has just taken on a new paraplanner in Bath, which helps emphasise Mr Coury’s belief that the best service comes from local support teams.
He says he is looking to take on two or three highly qualified advisers in each of the London and Cambridge offices over the next 18 months and build a support team around them.
“We believe in providing local paraplanning support. A lot of companies set up centralised paraplanning and we don’t think that works. An adviser needs local support. It’s more expensive but it’s about delivering quality of service.
“An over-riding theme in our business is to review everything we do and see how we can do it better.
“I know [centralised paraplanning] doesn’t work. It’s the most common complaint you get when I meet other advisers. They aren’t getting the local paraplanning support and admin they need, they have to go to a centralised [team] and it takes weeks to go through and that inhibits their ability to provide a prompt service.”
Once bitten...
The importance Mr Coury places on doing things right and constantly improving is not without cause.
Following a visit from former regulator the Financial Services Authority in 2009, Money Wise was fined just under £20,000 for not having robust enough training arrangements for advisers and for not ensuring suitability reports were clear and not misleading.
As reported in FTAdviser at the time, it found Moneywise recommended platform-based investment to 519 customers but failed to ensure its advisers explained their rationale clearly to investors.
At the time the regulator admitted no clients had been harmed.
But Mr Coury has taken it on the chin and moved on.
“It was a long time ago and following a period of growth in the firm, and as the FSA said themselves... our compliance hadn’t kept up with the growth of the business and they acknowledged the fact that we cooperated and made significant structural changes so our compliance is now very strong.”
For example, the firm now has a compliance director sitting on its board instead of simply a compliance manager, and it uses services from 360 Services and regulatory lawyers Boyd Dickinson to make extra sure nothing slips through the cracks again.
“[It] sends a very strong message that we take compliance very seriously, especially having had that incident occur in 2009. We are very mindful of compliance.”
