Member Article

Behind the Business with True Potential LLP

True Potential LLP is one of the most innovative financial services firms in the UK today, currently working with over 22% of the IFA market. David Harrison, Managing Partner, takes Bdaily behind the business.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

The financial services sector as a whole has been subject to tremendous upheaval over the past nine months. Many are still wrestling with the fallout of the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) – a Government-led regulation brought in supposedly to clarify the way financial advisers charge their clients – and most within the industry are sceptical of its success, to put it mildly.

It has certainly forced a lot of people to reconsider their future in the industry, which is creating an ‘advice gap’. However, on the bright side, regulation affects everyone in the same way so it is up to the brightest, most innovative companies and individuals to find ways of making it work for them. There is still a thirst and a need for financial advice on many levels, so we see our role as being there to make it as easy and clear as possible for advisers to operate within the new framework.

More generally, we see ourselves as a company that fights for our customers and for our end users – people who want to save, invest and see their wealth grow – so their challenges are our challenges. Low interest rates, high inflation, and poor levels of understanding of financial products are affecting all savers.

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

We have achieved strong growth against a difficult trading backdrop, especially with the RDR in mind. In 2012, we achieved a £3.6 million pre-tax profit, an increase of 57 per cent compared to 2011. Very few companies at all, not just in our sector, are experiencing growth like this.

Elsewhere, we launched V6, our biggest-ever system update. V6 brings together all three elements of True Potential; the back-office platform; the Wealth Platform; and the client servicing tools and helps us further realise our ‘single integrated platform’ philosophy of placing everything to do with your advisory business in one online location. I’m very confident that the 22% of UK advisers that use our services, and their clients, will benefit from this move.

We’ve also proven our commitment to delivering better value and choice for our clients with the addition of new strategy funds from some of the world’s leading fund managers, including Allianz Global Investors and Cazenove Capital.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

Continuing to achieve growth will be critical. The industry faces some real challenges in addressing the advice gap as a lot of advisers are considering leaving the industry. However, we believe that by providing advisers with an integrated platform that helps them achieve compliance easily, whilst giving the end-user real choice, transparency and power, the entire sector can benefit.

We also have a big announcement coming soon that shows we are really putting our money where our mouth is in terms of helping to tackle the savings gap, and we believe this initiative will have real long-term benefits, but we can’t announce this just yet so watch this space!

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

For someone in this sector it would be to ensure you understand what your clients really value, and how they want to communicate with you. For example we believe people want service when they want it, not just when it is convenient to you. It is their money, and they should be very interested in its progress. This means that your web presence and availability on devices that consumers now take for granted is paramount.

For someone just starting in business – welcome, you are the most important people in UK society because you can create wealth for thousands, not just for you and your employees, but also for anyone associated with them.

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in your region or generally, and where your organisation sits within it?

Although we have our head office in the North East, most of our sales come from elsewhere. So we have the best of both worlds – world class universities providing a pool of talent and reasonable rents. And of course, intellect knows no boundaries.

We are very confident that there is a huge, untapped and growing market for our services, which are all about helping people grow their savings and protect their assets. People are living longer, and thus need to save more in asset backed investments and less in cash deposits. Good news for them, and for us.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Graham Vincent .