M&G Wealth is set to launch its own adviser academy this year as it pursues plans to "radically increase" numbers in its self-employed arm.
The company said it hoped the academy would attract new, and retain existing, advisers to ‘The Advice Partnership’, which M&G Wealth told FTAdviser last year had plans to rival the likes of St James’s Place and Quilter.
M&G Wealth said it was seeking a "new wave of talent" to the financial advice sector with plans to make the profession more sustainable.
M&G recently made the decision to move all its advisers to a self-employed model, with formerly employed advisers of Prudential Financial Planning joining TAP – which is part of Prudential Financial Planning – as self-employed advisers.
TAP, which offers restricted advice and launched in November 2019, initially started with 20 advisers but has since grown to a business boasting hundreds of advisers.
TAP is headed up by Tom Hegarty, the former managing director of the New Model Business Academy and a member of the strategic advisory group at The Personal Investment Management and Financial Advice Association.
Mr Hegarty said: "Our aim is to grow TAP by developing and expanding propositions and increasing adviser numbers through organic recruitment and the creation of our new academy.
"We have high aspirations for growth and expect to reach several hundred advisers over the next few years, to be scaled with some of the larger advice businesses in our sector.
"Collectively, if we don’t recruit new advisers to the sector then the advice profession is in danger of not being able to offer services to meet a quite substantial ongoing demand for advice."
Mr Hegarty said the academy was intended to demonstrate the value of financial advice to clients as well as making it "more accessible and affordable".
M&G Wealth is the new £28bn arm of the giant asset manager made up of Ascentric (the platform recently acquired from Royal London), Prudential Financial Planning and the M&G Direct funds business.
rachel.mortimer@ft.com
