Foster Denovo continues profit recovery and eyes acquisition

National advice firm Foster Denovo has continued its turnaround by doubling its profitability to £692,000 over 2018 as revenues from its investment proposition and recent acquisitions put the company in a stronger financial position.

Speaking to New Model Adviser, chief executive Roger Brosch said growing profitability was now the ‘most important thing for the business.’ He said: ‘It’s not really where we want it to be yet, but bearing in mind where we were a couple of years ago and seeing that really starting to come through, suggests investment we’ve made is starting to pay dividends.’

Brosch said he was particularly pleased with the contribution of Sequel, in which around 40% of client assets are invested.

‘It would always be nice if you’re pushing out double-digit growth every year. But the truth is 6%, in the current market is really encouraging. Markets have been quite volatile. Like a lot of advice businesses, we’re quite attached in revenue terms, to the recurring income that comes from the investments that we manage and the markets have been interesting particularly, towards the end of last year.

He added: ‘If you look at the growth we’ve achieved in Sequel, 15%, that really does buck the trend of the wider market where there’s been a lot of exits from equities.’

In terms of what investment has been made in the business, Foster Denovo has been developing its own investment platform, Clearview, which went live in June 2019, using Tercero software.

Foster Denovo made two acquisitions over the last 12 months, Orchard Wealth and London & Capital. Foster Denovo said there were more acquisitions in the pipeline.

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