Jason Huddy

12 March 2010 12:00 pm | By Lee Jones

The wrap platform sector may still be in its infancy on this side of the world but Australian financial planners have been using them for nearly two decades. It is this experience that Macquarie Banking and Financial Services Group UK head Jason Huddy hopes to bring to this hemisphere and revolutionise the British wrap proposition.

Huddy moved to the UK in 2008 and helped set up the Macquarie wrap less than 11 months ago. Based in Bristol, the system is now being used by 40 IFAs and the firm has ambitions to grow it into one of the biggest propositions on the market.

Huddy is the son of an accountant and always wanted to work with numbers. After university, he joined National Mutual Life in Perth in WesterN Australia.

“Financial services in Australia is younger and smaller than the UK sector,” he says. “When I joined the life firm, there was a growing appetite to support the emerging industry of financial planning. Up until that point, there were a lot of product sales from tied agencies but the focus was shifting to client’s needs and objectives rather than the products on offer. It was at this point my interests peaked.”

After several years with National Mutual Life, Huddy joined Macquarie in Perth, hoping his dream of moving east to either of the big financial cities of Melbourne or Sydney would be realised.

“I was at Macquarie for three years when I got my wish but I overshot the mark a bit and ended up in New Zealand.” Huddy had the task of setting up Macquarie’s banking and financial services group in New Zealand.

“My job was to build the business and serve financial planners with a range of products and services. New Zealand’s market was even smaller and younger than Australia’s, so there were challenges.”

He worked there for around two years, gaining experience that stood him in good stead when he was asked to set up shop in the UK.

“We had a sense of what we were coming into as we had been looking at the UK for five years prior to moving here and had been talking to financial planners, other bodies and regulators. It was a big market and set to become more transparent, open and clientcentric. That ticked all the boxes for us.”

The move towards the retail distribution review in 2012 was one of the main drivers for Macquarie’s UK plans. Australia had its Financial Services Reform Act nearly 10 years ago and its businesses, including Macquarie, had already adapted to the new world.

He says: “Our reform improved professional standards and qualifications. Some practitioners left as a consequence, which meant a short-term displacement of clients who lost their planners, but this was an opportunity for those committed to the new advice models to grow their businesses at an accelerated rate.”

It also meant a boom in wrap platforms. The Australian market is now the most advanced in the world and Huddy thinks that is a big bonus for a firm looking to establish a foothold in the relatively new UK market.

“We have experience in the most competitive wrap market in the world and have learned our lessons. However, our product here is a UK wrap aimed at UK planners for UK clients. That has always been the starting point.”

As well as bringing over the knowledge and experience of an effectively post-RDR financial services sector, Huddy says Macquarie is already introducing some of the innovations of its “Aussie wrap” to the UK market. This includes helping British advisers manage model portfolios as
well as creating a branded, online end-user product. But Huddy says there is more innovation yet to come. “In Australia, you can go via your wrap account to get insurance quotes and look at your loans.”

He is confident the whole UK financial services sector, not just the wrap market, will evolve after 2012, thanks to workplace pension auto-enrolment. “Australia is quite a way ahead with financial innovations because, in part, of its mandated savings regime.”

In Australia, employers contribute 9 per cent of salary into a superannuation for savings over time: “That accelerated the growth of the financial planning community because, all of a sudden as an investor, you have a growing amount of money to seek advice on.”

Macquarie’s UK business is not just about wraps. It has also launched Veracity Asset Transformation, a proposition to help IFAs evolve their businesses to be RDR-compliant, as well as buying a stake in IFA firms. It recently bought a stake in Paradigm Norton and Huddy says it will be looking to carry on with the acquisition trail.

“We are serious investors looking for reasonable investments in quality planning business. There are no hard and fast targets but we believe in the need for advice and are willing to serve that in platforms and also to invest in it.”

But Huddy says the wrap remains the firm’s core proposition. “We are committed in the long term. That is crucial as platforms do not have an
end-date. Wraps evolve and you need to maintain an ongoing investment to develop that proposition with the help of your financial planners.”

Born: Melbourne, 1969
Lives: Bristol
Education: BA in psychology University of Western Australia, postgraduate in finance and applied finance
Career: 2008-present: UK head, Macquarie banking and Financial Services Group, 1994-97: state manager of investment services, Macquarie, 1997-99: head of investment, Macquarie NZ, 1999-2008: head of adviser distribution, Macquarie Financial Services, 2008-present: head of
banking and financial services group, Macquarie UK 1988-94: National Mutual Life
Likes: Family, sport, particularly cricket
Dislikes: Laziness and complacency
Drives: Mini
Book: Built To Last by Jim Collins
Film: The Shawshank Redemption
Album: The Joshua Tree by U2
Career Ambition: To take every opportunity as it comes and never look back, only look forward
Life ambition: As above
If I wasn’t doing this I would be…Playing cricket for Australia

If you enjoyed this article, sign up here to receive daily email updates from Money Marketing and Follow @_moneymarketing