DeVere Group director Mike Coady said that the planned UK expansion would also see the company move to larger offices in the City of London “within the next few months” from its current Holborn, east-central London site, “before opening a second [UK] base in the third quarter of this year in the north of England, and then a third operation in early 2013”.
Coady did not say where the new offices would be.
Four advisers are scheduled to come onboard the deVere UK operation in May, according to Coady, and will be joined later in the year when “some more carefully selected professionals” are due to arrive. Currently the company has eight UK-based advisers.
As reported last year, Zurich-based deVere has always looked after existing clients when they have returned to the UK, or relocated to Britain from other countries, but until recently it had never sought to attract new clients on British soil.
However, as deVere managing partner Kevin White told International Adviser, the number of British returnees has grown to the point where there is now a critical mass to run – and further develop – an independent UK operation.
‘Already RDR compliant’
DeVere’s decision to focus on the UK advisory market could be seen by some as counter-intuitive, coming as it does as many established British intermediaries are considering selling up or merging with rival firms in order to ensure their businesses’ survival once a set of regulations known as the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) come into force in January.
Among other things, under RDR, advisers will no longer be able to obtain their remuneration through commissions, but must charge up-front fees for their advisory services.
DeVere professes to be undaunted by the spectre of RDR, however, noting that its UK operation “has already been RDR compliant for six months”, and saying that its expansion is being driven by “increasing demand for specialist financial advice”.
Indeed, White reports that the company’s turnover in the UK “is up over 115% on last year”, helped by greater productivity on the part of its advisory team, the popularity of the company’s products, and a trend among expatriates to return to the UK, both for good and temporarily.
White said plans are also in the works to launch a telephone-based financial advisory service in the UK market, to provide “simplified, streamlined and efficient financial advice to busy professionals” there, probably in the fourth quarter of 2012.
DeVere is also working on a plan to develop a recruitment and training programme for young people interested in careers in financial services, according to Coady.
