QuilterAug 5 2019

Quilter's Feeney eyes further growth

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Quilter's Feeney eyes further growth

Quilter's chief executive has said the company will focus on organic growth following its buy-out of Lighthouse and Charles Derby.

Paul Feeney said the advice market - with 26,000 advisers, many of whom are due to leave the profession over the next few years - would still throw up opportunities which Quilter might take up.

He said: "[We will focus on] predominantly organic growth, but there are still opportunities out there. The advice market is consolidating, and clearly we have played a part in that, but [the opportunities are] probably not of the same scale of the ones we have done to date. But we will still do a few."

Quilter agreed to buy Charles Derby in February, seeing more than 200 financial advisers move to its national advice business.

It then agreed to buy Lighthouse in April for £46m, which would see another 400 advisers join the FTSE 250 company.

Mr Feeney said the Lighthouse restricted proposition would be "enhanced" now that the company has become part of Quilter.

He said: "Of course the restricted financial planners will work off our extended matrix which is greater than the existing Lighthouse matrix and offers more choice and more transparency and we will be using more buying power.

"We put over £100bn to work every day in the market and we use that power to drive down costs."

Mr Feeney added that Quilter would continue Lighthouse's strategy of seeking "affinity" contracts with employee organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing, the Fire Brigades Union and Unite.

He said: "One of the main reasons I was really attracted to Lighthouse is they have 23 affinity organisations who cover 6m people with contracts to provide financial planning to those people."

Mr Feeney said delivering financial planning to these "every day, hardworking people" was one of Quilter's ambitions.

damian.fantato@ft.com