Intrinsic appears to be rapidly turning itself into the new Sesame. It has been on an acquisition spree and taken on many of Sesame's wealth advisers who left, along with buying its Financial Adviser school. Last month, it even recruited Sesame's managing director, Stephen Gazard.
What is this all about? Chief executive Andy Thompson said that the best solution for Intrinsic was to turn it into a big business, which in turn led to better deals.
He said: "The way we would differentiate ourselves is that it's controlled distribution. Lots of people come together that enable a network to secure a higher rate, and can secure a better rate to the individual firms than by going direct.
"We've used our scale to deliver better propositions for customers, to manage down price. We use our scale to encourage additional benefits to be made available, so our customers get more, and we've used our scale to be able to get manufacturers to devise solutions specific for our clients."
This inevitably raises the question of liabilities over bad advice. Sesame Bankhall Group has notoriously come a cropper with the consequences of bad advice playing out several years after the event, arguably because the business was too big and the network had too little control over the advice.
Emphasis on checks
Mr Thompson, whose business oversees 3,700 advisers, said that there is a rigorous vetting procedure in place. He said: "We have strong solutions about what we believe is strong financial planning, and our advice matches that.
"The second thing is we do an awful lot of checking – we check 3,000 client pieces of advice. The third thing that we do, while we do have independent advisers, the majority of our advisers are restricted. In terms of the panel, we put in an incredible amount of effort to make sure we've got the appropriate research and the right panel that's going to deliver for customers."
Where does this leave the financial adviser? Some would argue that the balance over accountability has tipped the other way so that networks may be interfering too much to prevent future claims.
Mr Thompson said: "It's a business-to-business relationship. Any individual who has been used to running their own business is bringing that business into our network. As a consequence of that they are losing some of their control; they're losing their ability to make the rules."
On the positive side, he said the reason a company might want to bring its business into Intrinsic is because of the range of deals Intrinsic can offer through its panel, by virtue of its scale, and the business support, through for example the Financial Adviser School, which can offer a pipeline of new advisers.
Intrinsic is not entirely about the network. It has 1,430 restricted advisers, with the rest being IFAs, mortgage and protection advisers. There are 38 wealth advisers in the private client business, headed up by former Buckles boss Nigel Speirs, now managing director of that division. The most recent acquisition was Caerus, the adviser business founded by Keith Carby, which brought it 300 advisers. It brought in 850 advisers when it took over Positive Solutions in 2013, before Old Mutual bought the company in 2014.
Buying power post-RDR
Mr Thompson himself came to Intrinsic via an acquisition. He was running the London office for what became the Zurich Advice Network and, as the company was looking to cut costs, it offered him a redundancy package. He set up a financial adviser business, Blueprint, which attracted advisers externally and internally. Eventually the business grew to 180 advisers, but in the run-up to RDR, Mr Thomson realised he needed an exit.
He said: "I just didn't see how the model I was running would have the acquired scale to be successful and have real appeal for customers – it wouldn't have the buying power that we needed in a post-RDR world."
He knew Richard Freeman, former chief executive of Intrinsic, from his days at Zurich, so he happily came on board, selling his business and becoming distribution director. He was appointed chief executive at the end of 2015, with Mr Freeman being made chief distribution officer of Old Mutual Wealth.
Bottom line
One of the consequences of all this corporate activity is the fact that it has made a big dent to the bottom line. Intrinsic made a £13.9m pre-tax loss in 2015, but Mr Thompson is optimistic.
He said: "The onus is on us to run a sustainable and profitable business. Our shareholders would demand and expect that of us, and it's a commitment we've made to that regard that's quite clear, post-RDR.
"We're building a national advice business; you won't see us making any more significant acquisitions in the short-term. What it does mean, we will be loss-making in 2017, but we will move to profit-making in 2018. I'm confident of that."
After another minor foray in the acquisition front for Old Mutual Wealth Private Client Advisers, for the high net worth market, he expects that business to have £1.4bn of assets under advice.
He claims that his company is not seriously affected by the FCA's investigation into vertically integrated companies, because each business at OMW is a separately regulated entity, and there is no pressure to use OMW's platform; restricted advisers have a choice of Old Mutual Wealth, Aegon or Ascentric.
Over the next few months, another challenge is appearing on the horizon – the break up of the parent company and impending float of Old Mutual Wealth. Mr Thompson is surprisingly sanguine about this; it is currently the domain of the "finance guys", and so for now he is being left alone to turn Intrinsic in to the behemoth he and his superiors wish it to be.
Melanie Tringham is features editor of Financial Adviser
Andy Thompson career highlights
2015 Intrinsic chief executive
2012 Sold Blueprint to Intrinsic, became Intrinsic distribution director
2003-2012 Owner Blueprint
1998-2003 Regional director, Zurich Advice Network
1988-1998 Financial adviser General Portfolio