“We feel there is the opportunity in other locations, aside from acquisition, to also grow our financial adviser numbers. That doesn't necessarily mean that we need to have a branch in those locations as well.”
As with Newcastle Financial Advisers’ previous two acquisitions, Keith Dyson Financial Consultancy was a fellow appointed representative of The Openwork Partnership. Newcastle Financial Advisers is one of its largest firms, and keeping acquisitions within the network is intentional, Lightfoot says.
“We see a real potential over the coming years to be acquisitive of other financial advisory businesses. Our initial focus is in the Openwork appointed representatives space. Clearly, there's already an alignment of propositions to many degrees, and it also provides us with the opportunity to integrate customers as smoothly as possible.
“We have a number of active discussions that are ongoing, in order to potentially look to acquire further Openwork practices in the future.”
Although Lightfoot says he would not want to assign a specific number to Newcastle Financial Advisers’ growth ambitions, he says: “Our total assets under management are approaching around £900mn. Our intention is we would look to more than double that over the course of the next five years.”
But Lightfoot adds: “We actually want to more than double the number of customers that we've got the ability to be able to help and look after. We believe we've got the ability to really help customers, even if they don't necessarily move forward to take advice and a product from us.
“Because actually a customer may have that first interaction with an adviser, and we can still add value during that conversation.
“But ultimately we might agree that the time is not right in order to move forward with formal advice. So we’d never see that immediately appear on the balance sheet or in our assets under management, but we've still been able to deliver on our purpose to that customer.”
Next, Manchester
Apart from acquiring financial advice firms, in July 2023 Newcastle Building Society merged with Manchester Building Society. At the time of the merger, the latter had no branches.
In its annual report and accounts for 2023, Newcastle Building Society said: “We operate in 32 locations on high streets stretching across the North East, Cumbria and North Yorkshire and following our merger with Manchester Building Society in 2023, we are considering how we might grow in the North West under the Manchester Building Society brand.”
In July 2024, Newcastle Building Society was advertising a vacancy for a hybrid working, financial adviser based at home and from Manchester city centre.
The job post read: “Newcastle Financial Advisers are expanding their reach to provide a financial advice service to our Manchester members to help connect more communities with a better financial future.”
