Member Article

What do you need to become entrepreneurial?

Bdaily has entrepreneurship in the spotlight in our latest focus week. When it comes to being an entrepreneur, you could say that David Harrison, managing partner at Newcastle-based financial services firm True Potential LLP, has done it all.

As part of his long standing career in the financial services industry, he was as a major shareholder at independent financial adviser firm Positive Solutions. In 2002, having built the company from the ground up, it was sold to multi-national insurer AEGON. He then went on to form True Potential LLP in 2007 where he still works today. The company has grown to employ over one hundred people and has an annual turnover of £220m, with profits reaching £3.6m during 2012, an increase of 57 per cent compared to 2011.

Here Harrison describes his career history, why the time was right for financial services and how his business is adapting to a rapidly changing market place. In my early life I did a huge variety of jobs. I began in engineering and then built up a business employing more than 60 building workers. After breaking my leg playing football, a friend convinced me to move into sales. It was then that I took the leap into financial services, selling life assurance for Hambro Life.

The time was right as the financial services sector was a real growth industry. My advice to any aspiring entrepreneur is to do something that really interests you as only then will you stick at it and succeed. If the industry is an emerging one, that’s even better. It’s much easier to do well in a growth industry than in a maturing one.

After ten years with Positive Solutions, I formed another team and True Potential was born. I knew there was more I could achieve in financial services as the changing market opened up the door to new approaches to saving and investing. The advent of technology such as tablets and smart phones, and the widespread use of the Internet, meant we had to adapt.

We had a view 12 years ago that people would be watching Channel 4, see the news, see the stock market go up (or down) and then be able to switch the screen in half and see their own personal portfolio. This is what we have been trying to do, to make sure people have easy access to their savings and investments and to do this in a way that fits with their lifestyle.

It was out of this idea that the True Potential Wealth Platform was born. The online tools, which can be accessed via smart phones, PCs, laptops or tablet devices, allows investors to consolidate and view all of their investments, while their financial advisers can build and manage their portfolio through the same system.

So what’s the secret to our success?

A generation of people have been put off saving, chiefly because it’s been so easy to get into debt – why save for the future when lenders are readily offering loans and mortgages? We believe this issue can be tackled, but it requires a forward-thinking, innovative approach, which we are confident True Potential offers. We also understand our customers’ needs – essential when you work with 22 per cent of UK advisers. Our aim was, and still is, to revolutionise the way wealth management is delivered to UK customers and we see technology as a way to do this. We wanted to put control into the hands of the saver and to equip our financial advisers with the best tools to allow this. Our service makes investing simpler, and above all, is useful.

Isn’t that the secret to any good product’s success?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by True Potential LLP .