Prudential Financial Planning could open its newly launched self-employed arm to advisers outside of the business in the next 12 months, director of the business Tom Hegarty has said.
On Friday (November 8) Prudential's advice arm announced 25 of its advisers had joined The Advice Partnership — a self-employed model which will allow advisers to build their own businesses selling Prudential's wrappers and products.
The new arm will initially mirror the service of products offered by Prudential Financial Planning under an appointed representative model.
It will draw on advisers already working for Prudential but Mr Hegarty said he would look to recruit from the wider market in about 12 months' time.
Mr Hegarty said: "We will have a base and a structure which, if necessary, will allow us to acquire businesses.
"That’s not currently a plan because there isn’t anything we are looking at in particular, but if that opportunity did come up in the future there is a structure in place which we could use for any acquisitions that may arise."
The partnership boss said any acquired businesses would likely be brought into Prudential Financial Planning under an appointed representative structure.
Advisers moving into the partnership can set up their own limited companies or trading names but will still be under the regulatory principal Prudential Financial Planning.
Prudential Financial Planning, its "employed" advice business, came to market eight years ago and currently has 360 advisers, with the majority of its client leads coming from the wider Prudential business.
Mr Hegarty said advisers who move over to the self-employed partnership will be those whose client banks have "matured" and have reached capacity in the number of clients they can advice within Prudential.
He said: "There are a huge number of policy holders in the Prudential business, so employed advisers generally work from those Prudential leads and set up ongoing advice relationships with them.
"Now, what ultimately happens is they reach a capacity in our core model, where they hit capacity in number of clients they can deal with on annual basis - that’s a capacity issue seen across the wider industry as well.
"There is only a finite resource available within that customer base, so if we were going to expand we couldn’t really add more bodies into the core business and so we created an option for us to expand but outside of that employed business."
A number of advice firms have made moves in the self-employed space in recent months.
In June Just Mortgages said it planned to more than double the number of advisers in is self-employed division over the next three years and earlier in the year rival broker John Charcol announced it would be actively recruiting into its self-employed network for the first time.
Speaking to FTAdviser in July, broker Coreco also confirmed it was looking to launch a self-employed network as a means to adapt in a mortgage market entering a "period of fundamental change".
Prudential's new business will give advisers the opportunity to plan their exit as after a minimum of five years they will have the option to sell their business to another partner within the self-employed arm.
rachel.mortimer@ft.com
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