Recruitment News

Financial Services: Turnovers rebound

The recent publication of the Top 100 Financial Advisory companies in the UK gave us some clear indicators about the strength, direction and size of the industry; important knowledge for those seeking IFA jobs, paraplanner jobs or administrator jobs.

Overall the networks retained their stranglehold on five of the top ten positions with turnovers reflecting broadly positive trends when compared to 2009. Although there have been some high profile casualties from this arena, turnover was largely either up on 2009 or in line with figures posted for 2008 and 2009. Turnover at the banks, unsurprisingly sharply down in 2009 from their 2008 levels, did show a level of stability in 2010 but they have a long way to go to return to the peak of their powers.

The Chartered Accountancy and Employee Benefit firms in the list showed robust figures, with turnovers generally flat over the past three years, with investment companies in the Top 100 also showing an improvement.

As you would expect the larger IFA practices had a mixed time, with some dropping from Top 20 placings to fall out of the list completely (there were to be fair, a number of major corporate restructures in between the publication of 2009 and 2010 figures) but in the majority of cases, turnover was stabilised or slightly improved.

What was interesting though was the increase in overall size of the Top 100 firms, from an average of 182 staff members in 2009 to 231 in 2010. Whilst the number of advisers at the Top 100 grew slightly, from 149 (2009) to 164 (2010), it is clear that most of this growth has been within the technical support function, backing previous indications that the market for paraplanner jobs and administrator jobs was improving at a faster rate than IFA jobs.

These figures are also reflective of ongoing consolidation, with major merger and acquisition work leading to the larger firms buying out some of their smaller rivals. It has long been assumed that the impending Retail Distribution would change the composition of the industry and this publication would support that theory.

One final note of interest is that the larger firms in the industry have some work to do over the next two years in relation to charging fees. Whilst there has been a steady increase in the number of organisations who derive the majority of income from fees as opposed to commission, the majority have some big challenges ahead.

For further information relating to this article and its effects on IFA jobs, paraplanner jobs and administrator jobs, contact Andy Taylor or Robert Perry at Exchange Street Financial Services.