PlatformsDec 14 2021

Multrees eyes adviser market as it bats away PE offers

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Multrees eyes adviser market as it bats away PE offers
Multrees’ founder and chief executive, Chris Fisher

Instead, the firm is focused on building its brand across the UK’s mass adviser market, after spending the majority of its 11-year lifetime focusing on the private client investment management space and high-net-worth clients.

Multrees offers firms white-label technology to build their own platforms, much like Seccl or Hubwise, except it has also invested in a middle-office function which employs some 120 people to support advisers and investment managers with operational processing - such as payments, transactions, and account opening or closing.

Having broken into profitability back in 2017, the platform has since grown its assets to £17bn. Paired with an increasing demand amongst advisers for its services in recent years, Multrees’ founder and chief executive, Chris Fisher, told FTAdviser the firm was ready to get its name out there and accelerate growth.

“We’re one of the last sizeable independent [platforms] left,” said Fisher. “We get lots of approaches from private equity firms. But management and our shareholders aren’t really interested in selling at this point.”

He continued: “We’re more interested in growing the business in this environment where more firms are interested in white-labelled service propositions.

“We do pretty well in terms of word-of-mouth referrals, and we’re investing a bit more in PR and the like. 

“I think we’re probably quite well known in what you might call the product-to-client investment management space. It's really in the adviser world where we need to make that push and gain more recognition amongst firms.”

It’s the ‘we’re growing quite fast, we want to control the client proposition’ firms which look at us.Chris Fisher

Multrees started life as a platform managing funds for high-net-worth clients largely in London, as well as investment programmes, focusing on multi-currency and generational wealth structures.

“From the beginning, we’ve done multi-currency and multi-asset classes - not just funds,” Fisher explained. “So we’re pretty good at accounting for complex underlying family structures. [..] I feel like we started at the difficult end. And that’s probably why we weren’t that well known for a while.”

He continued: “The sea change over the last three or four years has been more traditional advisory firms approaching us and saying ‘ok, you guys have a different model, let's look at the benefits’.”

Multrees began taking on advisory business about four years ago, but it took some time for the platform to establish a standard offering and processes in this space.

“The learning associated with that, being a slightly different dynamic than the one we’d had with previous firms, meant we probably took a few years just to make sure all that worked pretty smoothly before we started putting our name out there,” Fisher explained.

Asked what sorts of advice firms have signed up to Multrees, Fisher said it’s generally “growth-oriented” firms looking to take more ownership.

“We get lots of growth-oriented firms which want to take control of their own branding and imaging. We get lots of M&A-focused, bigger firms, and people funding acquisition vehicles, as well as newer, entrepreneurial start-ups. 

“It’s the ‘we’re growing quite fast, we want to control the client proposition’ firms which look at us.”

Whilst advice firms will always have some assets on legacy platforms they can’t move, those considering Multrees “want to go lock, stock and barrel” with the platform - i.e. use it as their primary platform - according to the CEO.

Pressure to grow

Rising demand has “put pressure” on the business to grow, according to Fisher, which has been tricky during a pandemic.

“Adding staff and getting new staff trained up and getting them ingrained in the culture and the business has been challenging,” said Fisher.

Multrees’ platform is a mixture of bought-in and self-built technology, supported by a team of more than 100 front-facing employees whose jobs it is to support advisers and investment managers.

“The advice business is still a people business at the end of the day,” Fisher explained. But recruiting challenges have meant the firm has had to lean on a degree of automation.

“It’s a really hot job market at the minute. It’s actually made us double down and re-focus our efforts on automating processes, getting some robotics going, to help further improve scalability because actually getting people in at the moment is quite tight.”

The firm’s aim of becoming better known over the next few years has already seen a number of regional advice firms sign up to the platform in recent months.

And whilst Multrees isn’t opening any doors to PE buyers, it is open to raising investment. The firm last raised funds back in 2012, and its shareholders are often telling Fisher to watch out for opportunities - though none have been the right one just yet.

ruby.hinchliffe@ft.com