Early milestones such as the acquisitions of adviser network Intrinsic and wealth manager Quilter Cheviot have been followed by the thornier issues of upgrading the firm’s adviser platform and preparing to separate the business from its FTSE 100 parent.
Dealing with complexity is not unfamiliar territory for Mr Feeney, who had a preference for problem solving early on in life. Growing up in inner city Manchester, an affinity for maths led to him teaching financial economics at university, then saw him veer more and more towards investment and eventually prompted a career in the City.
“I was fascinated by the financial markets although they always seemed to be a world apart from where I was,” he says. “I guess everything’s a journey. Where I started out it was more and more about trying to look at how you connect real people with investment markets.”
He continues: “Even today I think the fund management industry is too disconnected from the end customer, from real people and their needs. They’re trying to get closer but people need solutions rather than just products. They want solutions most likely to keep their promises, they want good advice from people they can trust and they want to be treated like proper customers not just units in a fund.
“Old Mutual gave me the opportunity, with a lot of talented people, to set a vision to try and do that.”
Mr Feeney identified issues at the business that he sought to put right. His initial assessment of the firm’s adviser platform, formerly known as Skandia, was “a highly entrepreneurial business which had lost its way. It was the first pioneer of open architecture in this country 20-odd years ago, but then carried on without really changing”.
The opportunity to revamp the platform came as part of a wider goal, however.
“It set out to be the leading investment platform, [but] we’ve just changed one thing – we want to be the leading investment business. We changed one word and it changed everything. That’s because the leading investment business needs to have a leading investment platform but it’s an investment business with a platform, not an investment platform business.
“If you change your mindset that way, it makes you think from the customer’s perspective.”
This shift in mindset led to the most high-profile changes of Mr Feeney’s tenure: the acquisitions of Intrinsic and Quilter Cheviot, as well as bringing the insurer’s fund management arm – Old Mutual Global Investors (OMGI) – under the Wealth banner.
But the original issue, that of overhauling the platform, has proved a lengthier process than first expected. The most fundamental change to the service – an upgrade of its technology – is now over budget and behind schedule.
Mr Feeney acknowledges the upgrade has been the biggest challenge of his time at the firm.
“I think IT is a real enabler, it helps customers access you as they wish to access you. So we’ve been undergoing a major IT programme to upgrade all of our investment platforms, which I believe is absolutely the right thing to do, but it is costing more and taking longer. I’ve learned more about C# coding than I ever thought I would need to.”
Turning to the firm’s corporate strategy, Mr Feeney is keen to put right what he sees as a misconception. He explains: “People think we’ve made a lot of acquisitions but we’ve sold eight businesses and bought two.
“The eight we sold were predominantly closed insurance book businesses in continental Europe, and the businesses we purchased have been Quilter Cheviot and Intrinsic. We’ve grown OMGI and the investment platform businesses organically.”
As his experience has been predominantly in asset and wealth management in the past 30 years, he highlights the importance of hiring talented people who know how the businesses work and “have a common purpose”.
“We are here to create prosperity for the generations of today and tomorrow. The corporate goal is democratising wealth management, but that materialises by creating prosperity. It makes you think about charging structures, about types of products, how you communicate and design those products and services, and how you provide financial advice and charge for it.
“So we brought people together who believed in what we were doing and had the talent and skills to make that happen for the customer.”
Among the most high-profile hires was the appointment of Richard Buxton from Schroders in 2013 as a fund manager, before he took on the role of chief executive of OMGI in 2015.
“Richard was one of our first hires and certainly one of our biggest hires, even today. But what we told Richard, and we’ve told people coming into [all aspects of the business], is ‘this is what we’re trying to achieve’.”
It is clear, however, that any arrivals, be it businesses such as Quilter Cheviot and Intrinsic or talent such as the former Ignis fixed income team led by Russ Oxley, who joined in 2015 and left earlier this year, have to fit in with the business. Mr Oxley’s swift departure raised eyebrows in the fund buyer community. Mr Feeney would not be drawn on the specifics, but pointed to the overall pace of change at the firm.
“In any business that’s growing as fast as we’ve grown, you’ll hire a few people and sometimes it just doesn’t fit. It’s not that they have a poor culture or you have a poor culture – it’s human relationships. When that happens, you have to make a decision for the greater good,” he says.
One departure that is rather more planned is Old Mutual Wealth’s ‘managed separation’ from parent company Old Mutual, with a view to listing the business as a separate entity.
Mr Feeney outlines: “It’s the right approach and an endorsement of where the businesses are that that is possible. I don’t think it would have been possible a number of years ago, but it is now.
“It’s a lot of work but it’s an exciting period of time. In the meantime, we [need to] stay focused on customers and keep remembering what we’re in business for, which is to create wealth for our customers, everything else is noise really.”
Spinning off the firm is a sign that the company’s business model is now settled. That means future deals are less likely than they once were, according to the chief executive.
He says: “The attraction of talent is a core part of the business. We’re in the market to attract and retain it, but [you’re] not going to see us make any big acquisitions [soon].
“We’ve been building this business for the past four and a half years. We’ve got our challenges, but we just try and stay focused on our purpose and what we’re all trying to achieve. There are always more ideas, and some ideas fill a genuine need.”
Old Mutual Wealth’s vertically integrated model has been viewed with scepticism in some quarters – not least by those who say providers that own advisers will inevitably prioritise fund flows over clients. But Mr Feeney is forthright on this issue.
“[I say to the team] don’t forget first and foremost we’re fiduciaries, our job is to protect and grow our clients’ wealth, if we’re not doing that we’re not doing anything. It’s a big responsibility [and] it shouldn’t be taken lightly.”
On charging, he adds: “All of our new products and services are a lot cheaper than older ones, so we earn a lower margin than on old insurance-based products, none of them have any exit charges, surrender charges etcetera, so people stay because they want to, not because they have to.”
There is another side to the focus on end-clients. Mr Feeney concludes with a hint that the business may be looking at the direct-to-consumer route in future: “I don’t think we’re a brand in the sense of a retail-known brand yet, as we’re just starting on our journey, but our aim is that we will be.”
