Former Positive Solutions recruitment and sales director Mike Edwards has joined network True Potential as a partner.

Edwards will work closely with the senior team to advise on strategy and distribution.

Managing partner David Harrison said: “It is great to be working with Mike again. As someone who has worked closely with distribution for many years, Mike adds a wealth of valuable experience to the senior team and his input will be very welcome.”

Edwards was on the Positive Solutions board for more than ten years and was the last board member of Positive Solutions to oversee the 2005 sale of the firm to Aegon.

Dear all

I’m pleased to report that True Potential are winners of the Money Marketing Awards ‘Best Support Service’.

Presented to us at the Grosvenor Hotel, London the Money Marketing Awards are the most prestigious of their kind in the industry and we are incredibly proud to have won this category.

This award follows on from last years success where we won Best Use of Technology by an Adviser and has been a fantastic way to help us celebrate the 5th birthday of True Potential and the 1st birthday of our Wealth Platform.

Thanks to everyone who has been involved in us winning this award – they are too numerous to mention here, but include our hard-working staff, our great clients and the many partners we work with throughout the industry.

Regards

Daniel

True Potential has recently added two types of discretionary funds to its platform, enabling it to cater for advisers who want varying degrees of involvement when they outsource their clients’ investment portfolios.

The platform has added London & Capital’s 10 risk-graded growth-oriented managed portfolios and its two income portfolios to its range, along with Close Brothers Asset Management’s portfolio fund range, which is part of the Close discretionary funds unit trust.

Unlike DFM portfolios that are structured as funds, the L&C portfolios cannot be brought on to any platform because they are built on the platform itself. This means the platform needs more sophisticated technology than a fund structure. The adviser also has more involvement than in a fund structure because the adviser appoints L&C to run the portfolio for their client.

L&C’s approach does not suit all advisers as some do not want so much involvement, which is why True Potential has also brought the Close portfolio funds on to its platform. These five risk-graded multi-asset Oeic funds essentially provide access to Close Brothers’ DFM skills wrapped up in a fund structure.

True Potential senior partner Daniel Harrison says: “We looked at the performance of the Close funds since inception, the way they manage risk and the charges they were willing to offer before adding them to our exclusive investment strategies.”

Firstly, True Potential LLP is now five years old. Initially built to provide directly regulated financial advisers with technology and administrative support services, we have ‘been live’ with our first client since January 2008 and have evolved our offer substantially throughout. Particular highlights have included:

-       Broadening our offer to include full compliance support and consultancy

-       Being the first organisation in our industry to offer mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Google Android and Blackberry

-       Winning several major awards, including Money Marketing Best use of Technology and achieving an F&TRC top rating

-       A continual update of the planning tools you can use with your clients, with an attitude to risk, asset allocation, lifestyle planning and investment objective toolkits all having been released

We now work with more than 780 different IFA firms, providing services to more than 20% of the UK IFA industry.

Our recently posted accounts posted a pre-tax profit increase of 77% to £2.3m and an increase in turnover to £5.8m. We are immensely proud of these results and believe that they offer us the platform needed to realise our ambitious plans and further improve the services that we offer to our clients.

March 21^st also sees the first anniversary of our Wealth Platform. Throughout our first year we have been tremendously busy enhancing our proposition and I feel that we now have an excellent and compelling proposition for your business and your clients’ monies.

When initially designing our Wealth Platform we wanted to build something that offered tremendous integration with your V5 system, gave you access to purposeful planning tools and offered both value and investment choice to your clients. As the year has progressed, I feel confident that we are on the path to delivering this, having achieved:

-       A seamlessly linked investment process giving the most effective route to investment in the industry

-       Three exclusively available investment strategies from SEI, 7IM and Close Brothers Asset Management, offering superb value and choice

-       The widest choice of investment options in the UK

-       An excellent range of tax wrappers and pricing options

Building the Wealth Platform also sees the realisition of our ‘Single integrated wealth platform’ concept. For the first time, financial advisers can now work with all of their clients past, present and future financial information in one place and deliver an RDR ready value proposition model through innovative client servicing tools.

It was with a sense of pride that the platform not only broke even in its first year but also made a profit. We believe that this achievement is a first when looking at the performance of others in the wrap space.

At the time of writing we have also passed the advent of our value-sharing scheme’s first qualification period. Launched to all True Potential clients, we designed it to reward you all through sharing in our future value and to better align our mutual interests as we move toward the RDR and beyond.

This scheme has been a tremendous success to date and the participation has been excellent. When combined with our continuing commitment to our clients, our encouraging financial performance and our ambitious growth plans I’m confident that the future looks excellent for us all and I look forward to sharing in the inevitable success that will follow.

Best regards

David Harrison
Managing Partner

I’m pleased to let you know that the True Potential iPad app has now been updated with a brand new portfolio section. This section closely mirrors the client sites and gives a clean and more comprehensive view of all investments, pensions and other assets. The charts have also been updated to show different views and offers an enhanced user experience.

As with the client site, the level of reporting we can offer for the True Potential Wealth Platform is greater than other providers; this is because of the substantial levels of data integration that we employ.

The app is available for both IFAs using True Potential and their clients and is a free download from the App Store. If you already have the app, you simply need to update it from the App Store>updates tab.

We remain the only organisation of our kind to have developed an iPad app for our clients and I hope that you see this latest update as a further commitment to financial understanding and transparency through our innovative use of technology.

Regards

Daniel

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View your asset allocation using our new charts