Old Mutual Wealth’s Paul Feeney has batted away wider market regulatory concerns as the company saw its highest ever quarter for net client cash flow in early 2017.
The chief executive of Old Mutual Wealth said the company has no worries about the Financial Conduct Authority’s focus on the value for money of platforms or consolidators ability to treat customers fairly.
Mr Feeney was speaking as Old Mutual Wealth announced that in the first quarter of 2017 it had a net client cash flow of £2.7bn – up 59 per cent on the same period in 2016.
Integrated flows from Intrinsic increased 60 per cent to £0.8bn.
Mr Feeney said: “We welcome and will work with our regulator in any reviews they come up with.
“We believe we are offering excellent customer propositions and you can see that through our flows.
“We have very strong compliance oversight within our own investment advisory business.”
In February the FCA said it was “disappointed” with the findings of its advice consolidation review which found firms tended to focus on the commercial benefits of consolidation and did not focus on the impact on the client.
Meanwhile the regulator has also said it will run a market study into the investment platform space after its work highlighted a “number of competition issues”.
Mr Feeney added that Old Mutual Wealth’s demerger plans remain on track, with plans to list on the London Stock Exchange in the first half of 2018.
Responding to whether market volatility might affect the company’s plans, he said he “couldn’t remember a single year” when people weren’t talking about volatile markets in his 30-year career.
Old Mutual Wealth reported gross sales for the first quarter of 2017 of £7.2bn, up 44 per cent from the same period last year.
The company’s funds under management reached £122.3bn, up 6 per cent.
Mr Feeney said: “We have the right solutions for these uncertain times, particularly our multi-asset, absolute return and high alpha product ranges.
“While we are hopeful that this momentum will continue throughout 2017, we expect that markets will remain volatile and challenging in the medium-term, particularly until both the outcome of the upcoming general election and greater details on the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU are known.”
This morning Old Mutual Wealth also announced that it had appointed Tim Tookey as chief financial officer.
Mr Tookey has previously work as chief financial officer for Friends Life Group and finance director for UK and Europe at Prudential.
damian.fantato@ft.com
