In addition, he says, advice firms are consolidating to mitigate the extra regulatory costs and the age of advisers has gone up. "800,000 people a year are going into retirement. These people are looking for help, advice and guidance."
For this reason, Montgomery has been rapidly building the business, both through acquisition and recruitment to the academy, which currently has 50 people, so that, not counting Continuum, there are now around 470 advisers operating under the M&G Wealth umbrella.
Both Sandringham and Continuum are keeping their brands. "They have a good brand, and they've built that up over time, we don't see any need to change their brand," and they will not be asked to migrate all their clients over to Ascentric or get special deals on M&G products.
"Obviously we would want them to use our solutions, but we would want other advisers to do the same, and they need to negotiate like with any other product.
"If we can make it as easy as possible for Sandringham and Continuum to use our investment solutions, we're making it easier to run their business, and it should be easier for anyone else in the market."
But as well as the fully fledged advice business, he is keen to develop the lower cost hybrid service.
With this service he says: "You never talk to an adviser from start to finish, we've reduced that process down. There's lots of steps in the process such as customer fact-find, attitude to risk, suitability reporting, the advice rules are bound up in the solution, then the adviser comes in and supports the customer.
"There was a trend with robo-advice. What we found is that actual physical advice is important on the journey, at the start and at the end – the customer needs to understand where they're going throughout the journey.
"The customer is putting their life savings into a retirement solution, they want greater validation they're doing the right thing. There's an inherent need to get reassurance from a human being."
After a busy corporate acquisition spell, Montgomery is fairly clear that he does not foresee the need for any other major acquisition.
"We will never say never to an acquisition of an advice business, if there's a good fit to one of our three businesses", but he is open to individual advisers joining the business, people who are looking to do a buyout, either to stay with the business or for those who are retiring.
