Tavistock GroupJul 23 2020

Tavistock looks to triple assets with platform launch

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Tavistock looks to triple assets with platform launch

Chief executive Brian Raven told FTAdviser he expected the national advice and investment firm’s Fum to reach between £3bn and £5bn in the next three to five years after it hit the £1bn milestone in its annual results published this morning (July 23).

His comments come as Tavistock looks to launch a whole of market platform for its advisers later this year in a bid to “manage the entire value chain” and provide its investment solutions more efficiently.

The platform, which will offer a range of funds including Tavistock’s own, is a bid to lower the overall cost of receiving advice and investments for the end client, Mr Raven said.

He said: “We continue looking at ways to do the best job we can by the client. Our opinion is that the client is often ignored in this industry in the quest for profitability, and we try very hard not to do that.

“If we’re able to deliver a platform solution which is a lower cost than the platforms a lot of retail clients are using, then that’s a plus. It also makes advisers’ lives easier as it will be integrated with back office functions and the client's details.”

The platform will be available to Tavistock’s own advisers and firms who are working with the network or making use of its investment products.

Owning a platform would also help Tavistock expand its investment range, Mr Raven said.

Tavistock plans to launch risk-based model portfolios, which are often tricky to run on third-party platforms, as part of its expansion plans.

The hunt for acquisitions

Mr Raven also told FTAdviser Tavistock was “continually looking” for potential acquisition opportunities.

In March the company raised £650,000 of equity capital in a share issuing, selling a minority stake (about 5 per cent) to a Hamon Investment Group, as part of a fundraiser for acquisitions.

But the coronavirus crisis soon halted the firm’s buyout pipeline as the UK was sent into lockdown and nearly a quarter of Tavistock’s workforce was furloughed.

Mr Raven said today it was “much more likely” there would be further acquisitions in the near future.

He said: “We’ve never ‘been out the game’, but we are very fussy. It is much more likely once the lockdown is eased fully, we will do something in the near-term rather than the long-term.”

When looking at potential firms, Mr Raven said Tavistock was primarily interested in owner-led businesses looking to sell and that any firm with a bad record in terms of compliance and suitability was “ruled out immediately”.

Cost cutting

Tavistock’s yearly results also showed the company was looking to implement a group-wide reorganisation which would save the firm more than £700,000 a year.

According to Mr Raven, the bulk of the money would be made through a “realisation of [its] office estate” as it shakes up its working space structure.

The firm plans to close its offices in Victoria, Berkeley Street and Broad Street and instead combine the offices into a new bigger space in Mayfair. 

Mr Raven said: “It was always the plan to rationalise what we had, but one of the positives of the virus has shown that our whole business can work from home.

“We can be more flexible with people’s working lives...and we’ve taken the view now that we need less office space than we previously thought.”

He added there would be a “relatively” small number of redundancies as about 10 jobs were set to be lost.

imogen.tew@ft.com

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