One Four Nine has begun the process of integrating the advice businesses it has purchased over the past two years since it launched.
Following the recent news of its eighth acquisition, new chief executive Gabrielle Beaumont told Money Marketing the consolidator had always planned to buy a certain number of businesses and then “really start focusing on integrating them”.
“We didn’t want to be a business with loads of disparate firms doing lots of different things,” she said. “But then again we didn’t want to integrate too soon.
“We wanted to take on board some of the processes and best practices of the businesses that we’ve acquired so we could build them into our integration strategy, which is what we’ve done.”
One aspect of One Four Nine’s integration process is to standardise the contracts of employees across the business.
“This sits within the integration process, but it’s not the most critical because you can bring people across into one legal entity without standardising their contracts,” said Beaumont.
Now that One Four Nine has begun the process of integration, it is looking at standardisation of benefits and pay structures.
“It’s probably one of the most complicated aspects because you’ve got 100 plus people on totally different contracts and totally different benefits,” she added.
“Clearly, no one can go backwards, so it’s about bringing everyone up to the highest standard of all.
“It’s a big project and something that our HR manager is looking at the moment.”
Alongside this, One Four Nine is working on bringing all of its acquired businesses under the same brand.
“We are creating this one brand because the vision is to have two regulated entities – One Four Nine Wealth and One Four Nine Portfolio Management,” said Beaumont.
“The rebranding process is going to happen very swiftly in the next few months,” she added.
She said around every three months a business will be rebranded so that, by the end of next year, they all come under the One Four Nine brand.
The firm has recruited about half a dozen advisers in the past few months. It is also in the process of training paraplanners who want to become advisers.
“We’re looking to introduce a mentoring scheme to link individuals up with more senior individuals across the business,” said Beaumont.
She said the consolidator is not currently looking to launch an academy but did not rule this out as a plan for the future.
One Four Nine launched in October 2021 with the acquisition of two advisory firms – Charter Financial Planning and Rice Whatmough Crozier.
It has since bought six further IFAs, bringing it to a total of 33 advisers serving 4,300 clients, managing £1.4bn of client assets.
The group primarily targets accountancy firms and other professional services firms which own or have a joint venture with financial advice firms.
It also considers standalone advisory firms which reflect its “collaborative, innovative and professional values”.
This includes advice firms either already or wanting to become experienced in recommending tax efficient alternative investments.
