Alliance Trust aims for IFA boost
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Alliance Trust Savings is looking to boost the volume of business it takes from IFAs from 10 per cent of total sales to 50 per cent and plans to open up its i.nvest platform to advisers.
Sales and distribution director Patrick Mill, who joined the company in July, says while its Sipp business has been driven by intermediaries, over the last 25 years, Alliance Trust Savings has typically built up its client bank via the direct channel.
But he says part of the reason he joined Alliance Trust Savings is because of the significant role the company sees for IFAs in the future.
Mill says: “It is not a strategic change for us, as we still want to grow our direct business, but we are very focused on the intermediary market. At the moment, the business is roughly split with 90 per cent of sales coming from the direct channel and 10 per cent from the intermediary channel. We see that becoming a 50/50 split in three to five years.”
The i.nvest platform is currently run as an execution-only service, but Mill says the aim is that will change over time with adviser business coming through the platform. He says this will be achieved by developing the platform specifically for advisers, with the addition of foreign equities in the first quarter of this year.
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