Offering quality service is about making every client feel valued

The former chief executive of Buckles, a Welsh financial practice he founded in 1987, says: “I certainly would have switched to graduates a lot earlier in life because that has proven to be a great way of growing a business. Having launched my financial services business in 1987, it was not until 2002 that we introduced our own graduate scheme.”

The scheme began with recruiting two young male advisers and training them for 12 months. One sadly died in an accident, but another graduate thrived, which convinced the firm to pursue the programme and recruit 12 graduates in total. 

Corporate dealings

Since then Mr Speirs has moved more into the corporate world. In 2008, he sold his Buckles business to the South African financial services firm, Sanlam (the graduate scheme was some years later abolished). He is now at QPCA, the business set up by Quilter Plc, which was formerly called Old Mutual Wealth.

“At Sanlam and Quilter we built the graduate scheme even further. Of the 64 advisers we currently have at Quilter Private Client Advisers, 18 have come from the graduate scheme in three years.

“That injection of new [graduate] blood is something I am extremely proud of,” he says.

When I ran my business, only in latter years did we really take control of the value chain. That was actually quite difficult to do.Nigel Speirs

When he set up the graduate scheme at Buckles, “people kept moving from company to company and they would often leave their problems behind,” he explains. But employing graduates mitigates this problem as you create a more “loyal” team.

Mr Speirs’ most recent role is managing director for QPCA, but he is now stepping down. He will still act as vice-chairman of the QPCA board, starting from January 1 2019. He will be succeeded in the interim by Darren Sharkey, who has been appointed interim managing director.

Mr Spiers’ daughter, Sarah Waring, who entered the financial advice industry in 2005 upon graduating with a maths degree in the same year, will now become a client proposition director at QPCA, having been at the firm since 2017.

QPCA is part of the wider Intrinsic Network, which has a total of 3,000 advisers, including those external to Quilter.

Mr Speirs says the difference between QPCA and Intrinsic is that QPCA advises clients directly, while Intrinsic does not provide any direct advice. It provides the regulatory framework to ensure advisers are meeting their compliance obligations. 

“I love building the business, but am not the best at corporate governance and answering to the very many corporate people that I have to. I think I am a little bit of a maverick. Probably all the reporting that I have to do is what I hate the most about my job,” says Mr Speirs. 

Another of Mr Speirs’ regrets is not having taken greater control of the “value chain” of the business. “When I ran my business, only in latter years did we really take control of the value chain. That was actually quite difficult to do. I think I would have tried to get oversight of that a lot earlier.”

He thinks consolidation in the financial advice industry will grow due to regulatory burdens stemming from recent regulations such as the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II that came into force in January this year. “If you are sitting in a one or two-man business it is quite hard to deliver all of that. I think the top theme in 2019 will be increased demand for advice, but reduced supply,” Mr Speirs explains. 

He says: “We are different from our competitors because we are a Quilter business. This means we are restricted, so we predominantly use Quilter solutions to meet the needs of the bulk of our clients.”

Quality service delivery

Asked how QPCA is different from his competitors, he says: “We in many ways won’t be vastly different from our competitors, but I think what differentiates us is our focus on delivering to our clients.

“We will make sure every client is seen at least once a year, perhaps twice a year. It is more about customer service. There are only so many ways you can invest money. What differentiates you is how well you look after people.” 

And often this is about taking care of the little things. “One of the things I have done is make sure that every client has my email address. It is about making every client feel valued,” which means responding to all of their email correspondence and remembering them on special occasions, he says. 

He adds advisers can improve their service offering by reducing the “excessive documentation” given to clients. 

“We give people far too much paper, we are spending so much money on things clients really do not value. At QPCA we measured the amount of paper we give a client and it is horrendous, just pages and pages of disclosure documents. For example the disclosure of Mifid II will do nothing other than confuse clients. I think somebody somewhere has got to crack that one.”

Saloni Sardana is a features writer at Financial Adviser