There has been a “dramatic” reduction in the number of advisers in the international space, according to William Burrows, co-founder and group managing director of AHR Group.
Speaking to FT Adviser, Burrows alongside Daniel Dickinson, chief executive of the group, discussed the importance of being spread globally as a business to be able to cater better to clients and retain them for their lifetime.
Burrows explained: “One of the key aspects for us has been that, especially with the entity we have in the Middle East, people do not tend to retire in the UAE, they often move away, whether that be to Australia, New Zealand, further east, or back to Europe and the UK.
“As an advice business, especially if you are dealing with clients where they are more likely to be transient, it is far more important to make sure you are spread further globally.
"This is so you are able to cater for those clients as they move, and not just be able to service the solutions you want to put in place, but also to have the right specialty of advice to give the client when they get to that new jurisdiction.”
AHR Group was purchased by Titan Wealth in July this year and Burrows believed being a credible organisation that delivered high quality advice equivalent to any other jurisdiction was what made the firm attractive.
“As a very large business in the UK, servicing 10s of 1000s of clients, you are naturally going to get clients who are higher net worth that are potentially moving to various different jurisdictions globally.
“So if your genuine goal as a business is to look after a client for the life of that relationship, you need to be positioned from an operational, compliance and regulatory perspective in as many jurisdictions within which they might end up going,” he added.
Dickinson discussed how the UAE, where he and Burrows are based, has become a robust country with people moving not just to work for a few years but to stay.
He explained: “We have always had the view of trying to retain the client for the lifetime value, rather than a transient region which becomes very transactional, because you take a client on this year that might be gone the next.
“We have always had that long term focus where we want to transfer clients that are part of the group and maintain that value, which means, honestly, our initial fees have become far lower. Our value is aligned with the client in that we charge manual fees, and as the client's wealth increases, we go along with people on that journey.”
Number of advisers decreasing
Burrows felt that in the last three to five years there had been a “dramatic” decrease in the number of advisers giving advice in international space.
