By Brian A., ValidPath Member
Brian A. is the Director of an independent financial advice firm founded in 2010. After starting with no client bank, Brian and his team have grown the firm to manage around £115 million in client assets and generate approximately £1 million in annual turnover. Since joining ValidPath, they have continued to expand sustainably, giving a growing team of advisers responsibility for their own client relationships.
I started my firm in 2010 with a blank sheet of paper and no client bank. Today, we manage around £115 million in client assets.
That didn’t come from one major acquisition or a period of rapid recruitment. We grew slowly and deliberately, building recurring income, strengthening our processes and recruiting new team members only when the business was ready for them.
Before setting up my firm, I had worked as an adviser and then moved into recruitment, where I spent several years interviewing and headhunting advisers. To be brutally honest, after assessing other people doing the job, I decided I could do it better myself.
We acquired a small, one-adviser IFA practice to establish an initial client base. For the first two years, it was just me. Since then, we’ve grown into a business with a team of advisers developing and taking responsibility for their own client relationships.
There isn’t one formula for how financial advisers can grow their practice, but these are the decisions that made the biggest difference to us.
Build recurring income from day one
My plan from the beginning was to build recurring income.
We started with clients investing £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000 into ISAs and pensions. As our reputation grew, we began attracting clients with larger portfolios and more complex planning needs.
Today, most of our clients have approximately £250,000 to £300,000 in assets, while a smaller proportion hold £500,000 or more. But the size of the initial investment was never the most important part of the strategy.
The priority was to build lasting client relationships and a stable recurring fee base.
One-off income pays the bills today. Recurring income gives the business long-term value and provides the financial confidence to invest in people, systems and support.
Once that foundation is in place, you can refine the business and start making decisions about how you want it to grow. Without it, recruitment and expansion become much harder to sustain.
Don’t wait until the business is larger to think about recurring income. Build it into the model from the beginning.
Recognise when you’ve reached the limits of a one-adviser business
Every sole adviser eventually reaches a ceiling.
You can only support so many clients while also completing the administration, dealing with compliance and making every decision about the firm. At that point, you have a choice. You can maintain a comfortable business at its current size, or you can build the capacity needed to keep growing.
There’s nothing wrong with either route. But if you choose growth, you have to accept that the business can no longer depend entirely on your own time.
We chose to grow, but we never wanted to recruit three or four advisers at once and hope it worked out. Every step had to be slow, sustainable and right for the business.
Growth stopped being about how many clients I could personally advise. It became about building a firm that could support more clients without reducing the quality of their service.
Get your processes right before you add more people
When several advisers and staff are involved, clear processes are essential.
If two or three people are all doing the same job differently, the business becomes harder to run. Supervision becomes more complicated, new employees take longer to settle in and clients receive an inconsistent experience.
You need a clear process and a clear Centralised Investment Proposition, with everyone understanding their responsibilities and how work moves through the firm.
The process doesn’t have to be perfect. I don’t believe any business reaches that point. But if it is 90% or 95% right, works for your firm and is followed consistently, you can improve it over time.
When we joined ValidPath, we spoke directly with the compliance support and wider support teams about how we wanted to run Merlyn. We set out our internal process and established how we could operate as a ValidPath Member.
Those conversations gave us confidence that we could maintain our approach while meeting the relevant requirements. ValidPath has stayed true to what we agreed, allowing us to develop the business without repeatedly changing the way we work.
A consistent process also makes recruitment easier. You’re bringing somebody into an established firm with a clear way of operating, rather than asking them to invent their own version of the role.
Choose support that fits your long-term plan
We’ve moved networks several times during Merlyn’s history. After a while, you start asking yourself whether you’re the problem.
But independence has always been non-negotiable for us.
We experienced networks that described their proposition as independent but made it much easier to use their own preferred providers and platforms. Looking elsewhere meant completing additional due diligence and overcoming more barriers.
In my view, that isn’t authentic independence. If the infrastructure continually pushes advisers towards one route, it eventually changes how the firm operates and what clients receive.
We spent six to eight months completing our own due diligence before switching to ValidPath. ValidPath assessed our firm, but we assessed the Network just as carefully.
We needed to know that it worked for the business we had at the time, but also that it could support where we wanted Merlyn to be in the long term. Moving networks is disruptive, and it isn’t something you want to repeat every few years.
Look beyond the support you need today. Make sure the organisation’s direction aligns with your plans for growth, independence and succession.
Use support to protect your momentum
The real value of support becomes clear when something threatens to bring the rest of the business to a halt.
When we left our previous network, we weren’t allowed to complete a block novation. Instead, we had to secure approximately 800 individual Letters of Authority to transfer our client relationships.
Our recurring fees were stopped when we left. That meant the firm faced a period without income from those clients while every letter was sent, signed, returned and registered.
Around £600,000 in recurring revenue was tied up in that process. Trying to manage it ourselves while continuing to advise clients would have created a serious operational and financial problem.
ValidPath took that onerous task away from us. The team oversaw the letters going out, coming back and being registered. That left us free to speak to clients, explain what was happening and preserve their confidence throughout the move.
To be honest, I don’t think we would have coped without that support.
Growth depends on maintaining momentum. When a major operational task threatens your time, revenue and client service, the right support prevents it from consuming the business.
Recruit for judgement and empathy, not qualifications alone
Qualifications matter, but they aren’t the whole job.
An adviser can discuss a £500,000 investment with one client and then support another family through a bereavement or deceased claim. They have to adapt quickly and understand the person sitting in front of them.
Technical knowledge can be developed. A firm and its wider support network can help advisers strengthen that side of the role. Empathy, adaptability and the ability to build trust are harder to teach.
This isn’t about somebody’s age. It’s about looking beyond their exam results and understanding whether they have the judgement and interpersonal skills the role requires.
We’ve built the Merlyn team slowly because each person has to complement the business. They need to work within our processes, fit alongside the existing team and be right for the clients they’ll support.
You can recruit someone quickly. Building the right team takes more thought.
Use technology to free advisers, not replace them
I’m fairly old school when it comes to AI.
It’s useful for creating a framework and supporting routine work. We’ve implemented PlannerPal for areas including reviews and more straightforward ISA and pension business. We haven’t tried to force it into every part of our process, particularly more complex areas such as drawdown.
Integrated technology will become a bigger part of financial advice. Used properly, it can reduce administration, improve consistency and give advisers more time with clients.
But it cannot replace the personal relationship.
Clients don’t just need an efficient process. They need judgement, reassurance and somebody who understands how they feel.
Everything looks good when markets are returning 8%, 9% or 10%. When markets move in the opposite direction, AI won’t deal with a client’s emotions. That is where a trusted adviser matters most. The aim should be to use technology to remove unnecessary work from the adviser, not to remove the adviser from the relationship.
The same principle applies to outsourcing. We outsource our paraplanning and have had a very positive experience. It gives the firm the support it needs without every function having to sit internally.
For us, it comes down to balancing cost, time and service. Anything that releases advisers to spend more time with clients is worth considering.
Treat growth through acquisition as a relationship handover
One practical answer to how financial advisers can grow their client base is through client-book acquisition from retiring IFAs. But you can’t buy a client-book and just assume that every client will stay.
You need to understand the clients, how they have been advised and the relationship they have built with the retiring adviser. The best way to do that is through a proper client handover.
At Merlyn, we’ve completed a two-year transition with an adviser moving towards retirement. Every client was introduced to their new adviser personally and face to face, with the existing adviser involved in the conversation. The retiring adviser has remained within the business to oversee those relationships while responsibility gradually moves towards the new advisers.
At the beginning, the relationship is naturally weighted towards the adviser the client has known for years. Over time, the successor earns that trust and becomes the client’s main point of contact. That is far safer than completing a transaction and expecting loyalty to transfer automatically.
If your culture is right, you can attract advisers looking for a strong long-term home for their clients. But you still have to treat each relationship carefully.
You aren’t simply acquiring revenue. You’re taking responsibility for people who have trusted another adviser, often for decades.
I’m now speaking with ValidPath about succession planning and the next stage of Merlyn’s growth. Whatever route we take, a gradual and personal handover will remain central to it.
Accept that your own role has to change
One of the hardest parts of growing a firm is changing your own role.
I’m gradually stepping back from being entirely client-facing and spending more time as a business owner and manager. Advising and running an advice business are different jobs. The skills that help you build a client bank aren’t identical to those required to lead a growing team.
Founders can also become protective of what they’ve built. When you’ve started with nothing, it’s natural to want to remain close to every client and every decision. But the firm cannot keep growing if everything depends on one person.
We’ve already started transferring responsibility to the next generation within Merlyn. My fellow director Phil’s son joined in an administrative role, progressed through paraplanning and is now an adviser taking responsibility for client relationships.
When another adviser moved towards semi-retirement, we divided his clients between two newer advisers. That gave them an established base of relationships to develop alongside the clients they were bringing into the firm themselves.
It creates opportunities for those advisers and continuity for the clients. More importantly, it builds a firm capable of continuing beyond its original directors.
Sustainable growth is built deliberately
Merlyn hasn’t grown by chasing scale for its own sake.
We built recurring income to create a stable foundation. We improved our processes, recruited people who fitted the firm and used outsourcing and technology to create capacity.
We’ve also protected our independence and chosen support that allows us to run the business in the way we believe is right for clients. At several points, growth required me to make a choice: stay as I was, or change how I worked so the firm could move forward.
That process continues today as I spend less time acting purely as an adviser and more time running the business.
If you want to grow your client base as a financial adviser, my advice is to take the long-term view. Get your income and processes right, recruit people who understand clients as well as products and never rush the transfer of an important relationship.
Slow and sustainable growth has enabled us to build a firm managing around £115 million while remaining true to the way we want to advise clients.
My advice for advisers
- Build recurring income from the beginning to create stability and long-term value.
- Recognise when further growth requires the business to operate beyond your own time.
- Establish consistent processes before recruiting more advisers or support staff.
- Choose a network and support structure that fits your long-term plans and protects your independence.
- Recruit for empathy, adaptability and judgement as well as technical knowledge.
- Use technology and outsourcing to give advisers more time with clients.
- Treat every client-book acquisition as a careful transfer of relationships, not simply a commercial transaction.
- Be prepared for your role to change as the firm grows and other advisers take greater responsibility.
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