Headlines
- There is definitely a sense that IFAs are winning business in the space that traditional Wealth Managers work in.
- There is definitely a sense that IFAs are winning business in the space that traditional Wealth Managers work in.
- Some wealth management firms are creating services that they can sell to IFAs in order to work more closely with them.
- For clients with £0.5m - £5m firms must be able to offer both the traditional wealth management range of services as well as the financial planning services that IFAs offer.
- IFA’s are closer to the client than traditional Wealth Management Firms and this is perceived to be the main areas where IFAs have a real advantage.
Key challenges
- How to change the levels of services that Wealth Management firms offer in order to start to have closer relationships with their clients.
- The 2-3.2% pa charging structure for Wealth Management firms feels very high but they do offer a range of services on top of those a traditional IFA can offer. These need to be better articulated to clients.
- New services are being created to deal with the smaller portfolios and the challenge is what these need to look like and how are they to be delivered. Robo advice was not seen as an answer.
- Client acquisition is seen as very difficult - indeed the phrase ‘brutal’ was used. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on how new clients are to be found by traditional Wealth Management firms and looking at IFAs client acquisition strategies could help.
- For larger clients flat fees are often in place so pricing pressure at the top end is extreme.
Conclusions
- Wealth Management firms will either need to enter into strategic partnerships with IFAs to offer their services or face the fact that IFAs will start to take some of their traditional client base.
- Wealth Management firms need to increase their client CRM activity as the relationship they have with clients is just about the money. This could see them being marginalised by IFAs for part of their client base.
- Wealth managers need to look at a different range of services more akin to that of an IFA in order to compete better in the £0.5m - £5m space.
Expert: Ed Carey, Multrees and Mark Poulson, the lang cat 
