The deal was agreed last year, but has never been formally revealed until now, International Adviser can exclusively report.
Infinity says “a large percentage” of its existing clients have thus far switched some or all of their investible assets over to Bestinvest, and “virtually all new clients are choosing it as their investment manager”.
Bestinvest is offering Infinity’s clients a choice of a “full, bespoke discretionary management service”, or, for those with less to invest, a choice of model portfolios in one of three currency options: pounds, dollars or euros.
“We felt there were very sound reasons to take this route, if we wanted to give our clients access to the very best investment management possible,” said Trevor Keidan, managing director and one of the founders of Infinity.
Added Chas Begley, the Kuala Lumpur-based head of marketing for Infinity: “We wanted to move on from the man and his dog sitting alone in a room in some steamy Asian city, picking investment funds for clients from a computer screen, which is pretty much how the industry has been operating for years and years.
“And the feedback we’ve had from our clients so far has been exceptional."
"Since the beginning of this year, a number of top Bestinvest executives, including chief investment officer Gareth Lewis, have done two roadshows for Infinity, making appearances at all six of its Asia offices, and a third roadshow is provisionally scheduled for the last week in October," said Mark Ommanney, business development manager for Bestinvest.
Ommanney said both Bestinvest and Infinity did considerable due diligence on one another for some time ahead of agreeing the deal, to ensure that the fit was the best it could be in both directions. It is the only such exclusive arrangement Bestinvest has outside of the UK, although the company also provides services to clients of the Spectrum IFA Group, which focuses on expatriates in Europe.
“They [Infinity] wanted to make sure that Bestinvest could provide the kind of professional standard of service to their clients that would set them apart, while we also wanted to make sure we were working with a professional firm,” Ommanney added. “It works well – we look after their clients in the same way that we would our clients in the UK.”
£5bn under management
Founded in 1986, Bestinvest is a private equity-owned, private client specialist, which caters both for investors in the UK who want to manage their own money as well as for those who prefer to get a little bit of help. With more than 30 offices throughout the UK, it looks after almost £5bn in assets, on behalf of more than 50,000 clients.
Many Britons will associate Bestinvest with its annual “spot the dog” list of the industry’s worst-performing funds, which gives journalists and headline writers an annual opportunity to trot out all their worst dog-themed puns, and the latest crop of photographs of mostly sad-looking pooches. (A spot the dog list for the international market was offered to Infinity’s clients this year, with UK-specific elements removed, and a focus on those funds available internationally.)
Most recently Bestinvest was named both Best Wealth Manager of 2013, and also Best Wealth Manager for Investments, by the Financial Times and Investors Chronicle, in their sixth annual joint Wealth Management Awards. The ranking is determined by a vote of the publications’ readers, coupled with input from a judging panel and from Asset Risk Consultants, the Channel Islands-based research consultancy.
Infinity Financial was founded in 2004 by Keidan and two colleagues, Ben Bennett and Judy Blair, who remain with the firm. The three had been working at another financial advisory firm in the international arena, which today is among their rivals, when they decided to strike out together on their own.
Trend to seek x-border partners
News of the Bestinvest arrangement with Infinity comes two months after the Singapore-based Henley Group advisory firm announced it was launching a UK operation, in partnership with the Cirencester-based St James’s Place wealth management network, as part of its ongoing efforts to broaden the range of services it is able to offer clients who live in more than one country.
The Henley Group is one of Asia’s largest expat-focused advisory firms, with offices in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, while St James’s Place is a FTSE 250-listed partnership, with some £39bn worth of client funds under management.
Earlier this year, Ian Gorham, chief executive of Hargreaves Lansdown, the Bristol-based, FTSE 100-listed UK investment ‘supermarket’, was quoted as saying that his company was “eyeing up opportunities to expand overseas” in the “next three to five years”.
Industry observers say the growth of regulations governing the way advisers operate in many markets is increasingly forcing wealth managers to establish locally regulated offices in the countries in which their clients live currently, not just where they used to be resident, or expect to be again one day.
