Most financial advisers build their businesses in hope that someday they would capitalise their life’s work by selling the business on but what do buyers look for in an financial advice business?
In this second part of my interview with Simon, we talks about Succession’s approach to valuing and acquiring financial planning businesses. This approach is to start by looking at the purpose of the business, and then taking account of fund under management and profitability of the business. We also talk about how Succession would structure the deal in terms of cash payments to the adviser.
Simon makes an interesting observation that any advice business without a generic and repeatable investment proposition is ‘valueless.’ In other words, if the relationship between the adviser and the clients cannot be replicated in the absence of the adviser, then it’s difficult to see why a potential buyer would be interested in the business.
I also asked Simon about some of his comments that might have not gone down well with with the adviser community in the past such ‘If you want to deal with millionaires you might want to be one.‘ He believes that ‘money goes to money’ and the truly wealthy tend to buy their services from other wealthy people. Off course, Simon believes that by acquiring advice businesses, he enables advisers to capitalise their life’s work… in essence ‘making millionaires out of IFAs!’
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