Sesame Bankhall Group is returning to wealth advice, Mortgage Strategy sister title Money Marketing has exclusively revealed.
In 2015, the group wound down its investment advice network and announced it would no longer offer support to wealth advisers.
This decision came after the group faced a number of pension misselling claims and fines from the FCA for failing to ensure investment advice was suitable.
Under the new structure, SBG was only operating as a network that supported protection and mortgage advisers.
However, in an interview with Money Marketing, chairman John Cowan and chief executive officer Michele Golunska, reveal that SBG will be u-turning on this decision as part of a wider strategy to expand the business.
Cowan says: “The manner in which we did this previously was that we actually licensed [advisers]. In the network, we had financial advisers who dealt with mortgages, and we had financial advisers who did defined benefit transfers, property, UCIS and so on.
“That got the business into an awful, awful mess and so when we talked to the FSA as it was back then, we decided to delicense people from doing investment business. Instead, we opted to run the mortgage, general insurance and protection and thought we’ll run a directly authorised business, helping them with compliance services.”
He adds: “That is where the business has been stable, growing for the last few years, but now we are at a place, where frankly our shareholders are really supportive of us and believe like us, that we have an opportunity to grow the business in [the investment] space.”
SBG says broadening its range of propositions in the wealth market remains focused on directly authorised firms, which it supports through Bankhall.
“The strategy is that the business absolutely wants to go into the financial planning and wealth space. We believe in it and we believe it’s a growing market, including later life, so we need to help those advisory businesses in there,” Cowan says.
As part of the change, SBG has created a new role of propositions director, designed to lead and drive forward the development of the service. The firm said recruitment for this role is underway and the individual will report in to Golunska.
Golunska says: “The creation of this new role on to the executive team is in support of our strategy. It is really there to support our ambition to grow the number of services that we offer out to advisers and across all of the entities that we have, including wealth, mortgages, protection and specialist lending.
“We are very keen to look at that in terms of new customer solutions and solutions for the businesses to make them run more effectively and efficiently, [including] technology, both in terms of underpinning the propositions and in terms of driving efficiency within the advice firm, as well as how they should adapt to changing technology and engagement. In addition to this, there is a commitment to grow a team under that role.
“We are very excited about that and we see it as us a big step forward, in terms of offering incredibly valuable services and meeting the needs and changing needs of the UK consumers but also helping advisers run better [businesses] and getting them great value products.”
Shifting sands
Alongside these, there have been further changes to the executive team, which Golunska said to continue to expect more of as it is “constantly changing”.
General counsel Sarah Batham is to take on additional regulatory policy, risk, and governance responsibilities, alongside her current remit, and has been promoted to the executive team as general counsel and chief risk officer.
Likewise, chief finance officer Steve Harris is to continue his role but will be taking over more responsibility for financial operations.
Other senior management changes include the departure of group risk and compliance director Julie Sadler, who is leaving the business to take on a new role elsewhere in the industry.
Elsewhere, group compliance policy and technical head Carl Wallis has been promoted to compliance and risk director in a newly expanded role supporting and reporting into Sarah Batham.
Head of human resources and development Kate Sparkes will now report directly to Golunska.
