CompaniesJun 29 2016

Succession to give ‘streamlined advice’ to clients

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Succession clients with less than £100,000 will soon be offered a streamlined advice process to allow its advisers to focus on the high net-worth.

Simon Chamberlain, chief executive of Succession Group, said he will soon announce a partnership with a company to provide “robo-advice without the robos” for clients with less than £100,000.

Mr Chamberlain said: “One of our big issues is when we buy firms the advisers tend to look after their top clients so we have accumulated about 50,000 (clients) with assets of below £100,000.

“We are about to announce a major strategic partnership between us and a firm which is going to service all those sub-£100,000 clients. It is robo-advice without the robos.

“They will be contacted by support staff who will collect all the information, hand it to a paraplanning department, which will assess them against the whole of the market and puts a recommendation together, which is signed off by an adviser.”

Mr Chamberlain said the client would never have to visit an office for this service, with all communication taking place remotely.

He added high net-worth clients could also opt for this service if they wished to do so.

Mr Chamberlain said he could not name the company Succession was partnering with, but added the service would be launched on 1 September.

He also added Succession will launch its discretionary fund management proposition, which it got permission from the FCA for in March, on 1 August.

Earlier this month Succession bought Beckenham-based Maze Wealth for a total consideration of £1.2m.

In the last three years Succession has purchased 25 firms and plans to buy the best 50 firms from its affiliated membership by the end of 2017.

Mr Chamberlain said it remains the plan for Succession’s private equity backers Inflexion to exit in 2018 to 2019.

He said he has not yet decided whether this will lead to an IPO or the emergence of new backers.

Mr Chamberlain said: “There are some very big private equity firms knocking on the door of our business now.

“There is a lot of interest in Succession because of the strength of its underlying income. We are always interested if the price is right but we are concentrating on our plan at the moment.”