So, did you think about increasing your fees?
We did but it wasn’t really an option. Besides the obvious fact that it would have been of detriment to our clients it would also have been frowned upon by the regulator.
Could you have invested in more automation and technology?
Possibly and we did investigate it however being a Financial Technology company really flew in the face of what we set out to achieve which was human beings providing a personal service.
It was also obvious that other companies like Nutmeg were in the Fintech space already and had a massive lead on this market so it would have been a lot of risk and we didn’t feel we would really be filling any void in the marketplace.
So, what was the solution?
We decided we needed to offload the clients who were not profitable so that we could focus on the clients that were making us money and that we were able to provide the best service to.
Sounds Perfect – How did it go?
The issues were significant, we found that for the clients we wanted to sell there were not a lot of buyers.
Most buyers in the market only wanted the High Net Worth (HNW) clients and were only prepared to buy the retail customers if the HNW clients came with them, which basically meant we would have to close down our company or join the buying firm (which we weren’t ready to do).
The more we shopped around the more we realised that there was no perfect solution, and it would be very difficult to achieve what we wanted to achieve without closing down our firm or selling up lock stock and barrel.
So, what happened?
We decided to speak plainly to potential buyers about what we were trying to achieve and found a way to offload the clients we wanted to at a top market rate and keep our firm trading.
But the bigger upside was that in doing so we realised that all the research, relationships, and due diligence we had done on the firms in the market could be used to help other Financial Advisers.
IFA Support was born!
We got so busy helping other Financial Advisers we increased our team to incorporate former financial advisers who had successfully sold their businesses.
As our service evolved, we found ourselves being able to add value in more ways than just people looking to downsize or sell and so we decided to step away from being Financial Advisers and focus on advising other IFAs.
Today we provide complete end to end solutions including sales and administrative support, all with view to helping IFAs to maximise their business valuation and benefit from more Money and more Time.
Take a look at our testimonials to learn about some of the work we have done for other Advisers and Organisations.
