“The problem is I’m not ready to retire and so I don’t want to sell my client book yet and I find myself working 6 days a week, sometimes up to 8pm at night servicing my existing clients”.

53-year-old Mr Smith of Oxfordshire, a successful IFA with over £75M of AUM across 350 client families was working all hours in an attempt to service a growing number of clients. When we discussed matters within in March last year he could see no way out and whilst the business was growing, his health and home life were suffering.

As an IFA who traditionally serviced his clients on a “face to face” basis regardless of the size of the client portfolio, we suggested that the current approach was untenable going forward and suggested that there is an alternative.

By grading his clients based on portfolio size, we identified with Mr Smith that of the 350 clients approximately 150 clients had portfolios valued at under £200,000 and these generated just £140,000 per annum in on-going annual fees (which were 0.5%) but Mr Smith did not think that he could complete a partial sale of this aspect of his business. Over 1/3 of his client book, representing £28M of AUM, was taking up over one third of the IFAs time in return for a contribution of just 25% of ongoing fees.

Periscope introduced him to a firm offering 8 times his income multiple and Mr Smith sold 150 clients and received over £1,100,000 into his firm. His business was more profitable and he could concentrate on growing the business with the correct type of profitable clients going forward. More importantly for Mr Smith his time was now manageable and his family life and health were now back on track.

Periscope structured the deal so that Mr Smith was paid out in full within 6 months.