The DFM and platform provider is currently owned by Martin Gilbert’s consolidator AssetCo, which has a 30 per cent stake in the business, as well as private equity firm Preservation Capital Partners, who owns the remaining stake.
Before this the platform was owned by Standard Life Aberdeen but the provider decided to sell Parmenion to Preservation Capital Partners in March 2021 as part of a deal worth £102mn.
Jennings told FTAdviser that when Parmenion was owned by Standard Life Aberdeen, it was part of a broader group that owned two other platforms and therefore Parmenion "had to stay in our lane a little bit".
Jennings said: "There were things our clients asked us to do, which we could do and which we knew how to do, but which we were not allowed to provide to clients because it might have competed with something the other two platforms did. But now we can do those things.”
Parmenion has assets under administration of £9.6bn, of which 70 per cent is on both its platform and discretionary fund management services.
The other 30 per cent is accounted for by other discretionary fund management firms, one such is Ascot Lloyd, who use the Parmenion platform.
Jennings said: “New owners means we can take a fresh look at our strategy. Previously we had to stick to providing our solutions, our tech. But now we can look at other areas."
He said one of the key areas Parmenion is focused on is advised model portfolios.
"Many of our current clients offer discretionary portfolios for some clients, and we work with them on that, but they also have advised model portfolios," Jennings said.
"They were asking us if we could work with them on that part of their business, but we were not allowed to. Now we can."
He added: "Over the past six months we have been testing this with some advisers, and sorting out the middle and back office. We hope to launch this service around the end of this month."
Jennings said advised model portfolios is an area that Parmenion sees significant growth in and aims to have between six and 10 advice firms using this service by the end of this year.
Jennings said the second area he wants to grow, and another area Parmenion was not able to grow under previous ownership, is in the “post retirement part of the market.”
He said: “We need to look at things like managing cash in drawdown.”
At the core of Parmenion’s existing offering is the model portfolio service. Jennings acknowledged there have been a flood of new entrants into this market in recent years, but said his firm will not reduce fees to compete, and will instead rely on his firm’s “track record.”
He said: “If you come into [the MPS market] now as a new entrant, the only thing you can do is focus on low fees, because you have not got a track record.
"But some of the firms which have done this haven’t really got scale yet, and haven’t made a profit, and one has to ask when will they be able to do those things? I think we could see consolidation in the years to come.”
david.thorpe@ft.com
