Firing lineJul 23 2020

Bowmore rebrand offers DFM and financial planning

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Bowmore rebrand offers DFM and financial planning

For many businesses, a company rebrand during a pandemic outbreak may not factor high on a list of priorities. 

But for Mark Incledon, chief executive of the newly branded Bowmore Wealth Group, the change is the culmination of his long-term plans for what was previously The Citimark Partnership.

“It’s always been my ambition to provide quality asset management with chartered financial planning. After 30 years in business, this significantly increases our offering while securing the future of our business,” Mr Incledon says. 

An asset manager must provide consistency and predictability, something that we now have developed a solution for Mark Incledon, Bowmore Wealth Group

“My management team and I felt that we have established a stronger brand under Bowmore and therefore after 30 years have decided to drop the Citimark name.”

As part of the rebrand, Citimark Partnership, a chartered financial planner with over 450 high-net-worth clients, and its discretionary fund management arm Bowmore Asset Management, will sit under the new group name Bowmore Wealth Group.

Although Bowmore Asset Management was originally set up for Citimark Partnerhsip clients – now Bowmore Financial Planning – the DFM has recently started to take on clients directly and has the ability to deal with other IFAs who might require investment management services.

Although the financial planning arm was set up in 1989, the DFM division was only launched at the start of 2015.

The main reason behind Bowmore’s decision to launch the DFM was that, from a financial planning point of view, by outsourcing, Mr Incledon often saw discrepancies in the investment performance and the level of risk being taken in order to achieve the returns the third-party fund managers provided.

Mr Incledon says: “We have listened to our regulator and one of the key messages is that it is important we treat customers fairly. But what we were finding with outsourcing fund management was that clients were not being treated fairly.

“Mifid II has also said that we have to charge commensurate to the service we provide, so now we created an organisation where if clients just want fund management, they can deal directly with Bowmore the fund manager and if they want financial planning, they can come to us and we build a financial plan or if they want a combined service, we can deliver that as well.”

Outsourcing

As Mr Incledon explains, a huge amount of what goes into a financial planning process is determining a client’s level of risk and making sure anything recommended is appropriate and suitable.

By outsourcing to a third-party company, and in effect giving that mandate away, Mr Incledon felt there was a mismatch between what he expected for his clients and what the business “was actually getting”.

He also started to see these DFMs were moving into the advice side of the business and therefore managing the relationship with them became a little bit more challenging.

Mr Incledon adds: “Over the decades we’ve never been entirely satisfied with outsourcing investment management, primarily due to inconsistencies in investment performance and service. 

“Hence, we’ve established our own fully authorised discretionary fund manager. This provides our clients with a more dedicated service, which is 100 per cent aligned with their objectives.

“For me, there were several issues I wanted to resolve, primarily associated with inconsistent performance and inaccurate representation of a client’s attitude towards risk. The final nail in the coffin came after a comprehensive review of an asset manager’s long-term performance. 

“Our findings showed the figures to be vastly different between regional offices. An asset manager must provide consistency and predictability, something that we now have developed a solution for.”

For Mr Incledon, having both businesses under one umbrella, gives the financial planning team a bit more control over what the investment manager is doing.

And by starting the DFM business from scratch five years ago and building processes from the ground up, this means the company has been able to create a model that is simple and attractive to clients and other companies that want to work with Bowmore.

Amid the lockdown, there have been some challenges around financial planning face-to-face, but Mr Incledon says this time has allowed his team to engage a lot more with existing clients than they would have done pre-Covid.

A lot of their clients are high net worth, entrepreneurs, very busy or short of time, or work for large organisations in senior positions.

As a result of the crisis and people being stuck at home, the clients have had more time and it has refocused their attention on planning and investment issues that had been put to one side.

Mr Incledon says the company has also not seen a drop-off in the amount of business being done.

This is good news for any company at a time when they are not just feeling the pressure from coronavirus, but also from the weight of regulation.

For Mr Incledon, owning an investment management business means the company has been able to extend the value chain while also creating a model that does not just rely on financial advice.

As well as expanding the business to other advisers, as part of Bowmore’s growth strategy, the company is interested in buying other IFAs or smaller DFMs who share a similar value but are at a point where they want to make a large investment into their own business or are considering some sort of consolidation.

Despite the challenges brought on by coronavirus Mr Incledon says the business is still in active discussions with private equity companies over raising the funds that will be needed to do acquisitions over the next two to three years.

It also wants to recruit individuals who have good relationships with their own clients.

Ima Jackson-Obot is deputy features editor of Financial Adviser and FTAdviser