Duncan Glassey believes qualifications and coaches have helped keep Wealthflow ahead of the game, and he sees the firm’s future is in further refining its specialist advice niche.
Duncan Glassey, founding partner of Edinburgh-based Wealthflow, last featured as a New Model Adviser® cover star in 2008. Since then, he has continued pushing the boundaries of professionalism, and Wealthflow has become one of our Top 100 firms every year since we started awarding the accolade in 2012.
A major factor behind this achievement is Glassey’s commitment to lifelong learning. He believes this mindset will define the next generation of top planners.
Having advised lottery winners at previous employer Ernst & Young, Glassey set up Wealthflow in 2007 with the aim of advising a small number of sudden wealth millionaires. He continues to build his authority on this subject and is studying with the Sudden Money Institute in America to become the UK’s first Certified Financial Transitionist.
‘I won’t necessarily use the title,’ he says ‘but it’s about developing how we communicate with clients and understanding their fears and concerns around that transition to sudden money.’
DUNCAN GLASSEY CV
-
2007-present Wealthflow, founding partner
-
2015-present DMW Asset Management, chairman
-
2002-2007 Turcan Connell, financial planning director
-
1999-2002 Ernst & Young, senior manager of wealth management
-
1997-1999 Mercer Investment Consulting, financial planner
-
1995-1997 M&G Group, senior consultant (Scotland & North of England)
- 1990-1995 Eagle Star International, IFA broker consultant
Shared expertise
Glassey was a chess prodigy from the age of nine and still plays fast chess online and occasional tournaments at an international standard. As well as being a lifelong passion, he says chess has helped him develop his ability to think strategically.
One of his most recent strategic business decisions was to narrow the sudden money niche further towards medical negligence and catastrophic injury work.
This is a honing of important strategic lessons Glassey learned between 2005 and 2007, when he attended a course run by financial planning expert John Bowen of CEG Worldwide in the US.
‘CEG taught me the importance of niche and of credibility marketing,’ says Glassey. ‘I had to convince people I knew what I was doing so I wrote a book, Financial Freedom: Using the Wealthflow System. Also we have blogged weekly since 2008 and get good feedback on that.
‘In 2015, I wrote another book, How to Be Happy and Rich, with our consultant coach Moa Diseborn. With our investment coach Tim Hale (Albion Strategic Consulting) this year, I also wrote an illustrated book about our investment philosophy. Now I’m starting a new book about life transitions for families with specialist care needs. Good quality material like this to give our professional connections and clients can be worth its weight in gold.’
New niche
Wealthflow’s medical niche started when some clients who are Queen’s Council barristers saw the potential of Glassey’s cashflow modelling work for the families involved and encouraged him to pursue it.
‘I was a bit frightened to do it at first,’ says Glassey. ‘But now the whole team feels that our service and our personalities best serve medical negligence and catastrophic injury work.
‘The families need our help. Parents are fearful about what to do with this money, for example who will look after their child when they are gone.’
FEES
Wealthflow stopped charging for initial work in 2009. ‘Often, they turn into long-term clients so I am happy to do all the initial work, including cashflow modelling upfront and not charge. We will be remunerated well over the longer term.’
The firm charges between 0.75% and 1% ongoing. For a typical client with £2 million of assets that equals £20,000 a year. This helped the firm achieve a profit of £600,000 in 2016.
Glassey says it is justified, one reason being low total costs. ‘We don’t charge on cash, which is typically 3% of portfolios. So a typical total cost is 0.97%; plus fund management of 0.34%; and the Transact platform charge of 0.13%.’
Glassey also highlights that the firm offers a life coach, a philanthropy adviser, a pension expert, and an expert witness all included in the fee.
‘We work with around 50 families, meeting every quarter typically with cashflow modelling,’ he says. ‘[In medical cases] we also meet their other professionals and trustees twice a year. We also pay for an accountant to do clients’ tax returns and pay for lawyers to give comprehensive inheritance tax reports. We negotiate incredibly low charges from Transact for the family. Plus they have access to our disciplined investment proposition.’
Do all clients need a quarterly meeting? ‘In the early years, when they might be concerned about responsibility for the money, there is a lot of hand-holding and support,’ says Glassey. ‘Our ethos is not for the funds to build up. The clients should spend it and we encourage that constantly.’
Glassey says fixed fees are ‘the next level of maturity in the profession’. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean they will be much less. But it would help planners to be clear on who they want to deal with,’ he says.
‘If you need £10,000 a year to generate the service you want to deliver, you need clients who deem that good value.’
Ongoing education
Glassey says the top advisers in the profession are all lifelong learners. ‘I spent 20 years doing professional qualifications but it was not for my love of exams,’ he says. ‘If you want to deal with the best lawyers and clients, you have to be the best in your field and qualifications go a long way towards that. Financial planners in future will be much more willing to broaden their skillset beyond technicalities.’
Glassey met life coach Maria Nemeth in the US in 2007 then trained in life coaching in Sweden. ‘I learned a lot from Maria and still use those skills every day to build meaningful relationships,’ says Glassey. ‘Cashflow modelling brings the numbers to life, but the broader the questioning, the more you understand what the client wants – the important stuff. If you can unearth those answers, cashflow modelling becomes exciting.’
While in Sweden, he met Diseborn who now provides regular life coaching to the firm’s clients as part of the ongoing fee.
Glassey has also studied philanthropy at The American College, and outsources advice on charitable work to philanthropy consultant Tom Murray.
‘Tom helps some of the richest people in society on how they can make a difference in the world and is available to support our clients do that,’ says Glassey.
Glassey also attended Strategic Coach between 2014 and 2016, where he says he learnt the value of giving responsibility to team members and establishing a 25-year business plan. ‘It’s good psychologically, because it shows the team that we are in this for the long term,’ he says.
Chartered concerns
All this learning sits atop Wealthflow’s status as a chartered and accredited financial planning firm, but Glassey has a stark warning about the latter following the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) merger with the Institute of Financial Planning.
‘When I did the certified qualification, it was a revelation that financial planners must have joined-up thinking,’ he says. ‘We are proud to be part of that elite group that keeps raising the bar.
‘But if we are not careful, the US [owner, the Financial Planning Standards Board] could withdraw the CFP licence from the UK. I don’t think the take-up is good enough and I am not convinced CISI members are interested in financial planning.
‘In the US, certified is regarded as higher than chartered [but it is not in the UK]. We became chartered because it was easier for professional connections to understand.’
‘Systematic’ passive and smart beta strategy reaps rewards
Wealthflow has been using consultant Tim Hale as an adviser for six years and he chairs its investment committee.
The firm offers in-house portfolios using passive and smart beta investments, which Glassey refers to as systematic investing. It sets the initial split between growth and defensive assets using FinaMetrica’s risk profiling tool, and includes weights towards small and value-oriented companies.
One year ago, it switched fund research provider from FE Analytics to O&M Systems as Glassey thought the former was expensive and O&M offered a wider package of software.
Wealthflow has not changed funds or allocations recently. ‘Once a year, we filter the entire fund universe from scratch and this year we came up with the same ones,’ he says.
The Wealthflow 30:70 portfolio has outperformed the ARC Sterling Cautious benchmark in each of the past three calendar years, which Glassey attributes to the disciplined process and tilts.
Funds that have contributed to that outperformance include the BlackRock Global Property Securities fund, the Dimensional Emerging Markets Core Equity fund and the Dimensional Global Sustainability Core Equity fund.
Experienced team
Glassey is Wealthflow’s only adviser, with two technical support and two administration staff. However, the firm employs a wide range of experienced consultants, including Diseborn; Alan Dick, director of Glasgow-based financial planning firm Forty Two Wealth Management, who is an investment committee member and Glassey’s locum; Fraser Grant, pension specialist; and Tim Hale, investment consultant.
Glassey owns Wealthflow jointly with his wife Colette who also works in the firm as a partner. They have no fixed salary but draw earnings from the business as required.
Glassey also recently set up Wealthflow Asset Management, which owns Glassey’s half of a joint venture: Drummond Miller Asset Management. This firm was set up to handle medical negligence clients of law firm Drummond Miller.
‘Drummond Miller was holding beauty parades and we always won them, because of our cashflow modelling, which many advisers talk about but surprisingly few use properly,’ says Glassey. ‘Also the clients understood our investment philosophy. So we turned it into a longer term relationship. My strategy is to have more joint ventures with law firms in that niche.’
Looking ahead
Glassey’s long-term plan is to continue moving more towards the medical niche. ‘The team are proud that we help people who need our help rather than just making rich people richer,’ says Glassey.
‘We might recruit another adviser, longer term. I’d also like my son, who is 16, to get involved in the business, and my daughter, who is 13.’
But is the firm’s reliance on Glassey a weakness? ‘I always want to be involved in the business,’ he says. ‘If I get hit by a bus, my locum would step in first. But the staff and clients have enough knowledge to grill another planner who could then replace me.’
The big question is whether to expand or not. ‘It would have to be with someone knowledgeable whom I respect, but we are not there yet. I’ve given everything to this business and the last thing I want is to expand too quickly.’
Best job ever
Wealthflow also funds Carebox, an online support forum for people with specialist care needs and their families, as a charitable endeavour. ‘We’ve been funding it for two years and blog regularly on it,’ says Glassey.
Glassey says he still gets a kick out of his job helping clients.
‘I get a buzz out of guiding them through the maze of complexity in financial services. And I like that clients trust me. That is one of the best things that can ever happen.’
FIVE TOP TIPS
-
Find a business niche.
-
Build professional connections around that niche.
-
Be clear about your charging structure.
-
Be clear about the service you are offering.
-
Do not grow the business too quickly.