The Contrarian Investor: The elephant in the room

CONTRARIAN INVESTOR

If I had a pound for every financial adviser I have talked to in recent years who has told me they are going to specialise in wealthy clients in the future...well, I would be a wealthy man by now, and presumably the client of these self same IFAs.

The reality is serving wealthy clients is far from a brilliantly original idea – in fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest there are not only too many IFAs beavering away at cracking this opportunity, but also far, far too many private banks as well. Talk to these global leviathans and they will tell you they do not really want any client with less than a few million in the bank, but we all know what they really want are those elusive globe-trotting ultra-high- net-worth types with at least $10m to invest. The bottom line is in the UK there is too much wealth sector capacity and...