Not afraid to do
things his way
Lee Robertson took his own finances in hand before
deciding to do the same for others and now runs
Investment Quorum as a financial planning wealth
management firm largely for City-based clients
BY GARY CORCORAN
Lee Robertson’s career path
has closely mirrored the
pattern of the financial
services industry he has
been a part of since 1988,
starting a long way away
from being a fee-based
investment specialist wealth
manager that he is now.
With clients having to
borrow money at above the
Bank of England’s average
annual interest rate of
nearly 10%, Robertson’s first
steps were as a mortgage
broker with Allied Dunbar,
a notoriously commissiondriven
firm with a hardedged
culture to match.
As he says: “My feeling
is you almost have to experience
it to know how bad
it is, or how bad it was
perhaps. I had a branch
manager whose idea of
management was to get in
about 10am, shout at eve-
ryone to hit their sales targets,
go to the wine bar
with the other branch managers,
get back about
2:30pm, shout at anyone
who had not hit their sales
targets and disappear again
about 4pm.”
l Eye-opener
He had initially joined the
financial services industry
after his own mortgage
broker left him with an
endowment but no mortgage
(guess which one
paid a commission) so his
initial experiences were
hardly inspiring.
What he had been
through though was
enough to show him the
importance of investment
advice for all, how this
should be delivered and
how he wanted clients to
be looked after – and he
sees no problem charging
a client a fair price for a
fair day’s work.
l Confronting the issue
This last point is a real
stumbling block as – and
he is not alone in this –
Robertson is not able to
come up with a business
model that allows advice
to be given to everyone
who needs it, saying the
industry is partly to blame.
“I would like to be able
to support that section of
the market currently cut off
from financial planning
but it is so expensive to
deliver in terms of professional
indemnity, regulatory
dealings, FSCS levies
and so on.
“How do you build a
sustainable model? The
only ones I guess who
could do it are supermarkets,
or maybe the new
banks. If these new banks
can deliver honest, ethical,
transparent, non salestarget
driven advice then
good luck to them.”
l Setting out his stall
After a succession of similar
roles with similar organisations,
he set up his first
independent investment
advice business, Capulet,
in 1995. Clients could now
get less than 7% – and falling
– from the banks and
building societies.
He could concentrate
on dealing with clients the
way he wanted to, rather
than fit the mould of a
larger organisation, and set
up in effect what was a
WEALTH MANAGER PROFILE LEE ROBERTSON
blueprint for the Retail
Distribution Review (RDR).
He set up Capulet with
his former manager at RBS
Financial Planning and it
was his drive to set up a
fee-based business that
effectively saw him leave
and set up Investment
Quorum, now split almost
evenly between advisory
and discretionary clients.
“It [Capulet] did not
really work as we had some
competing views. I had the
view that fee-based was
the way to go he and was
a bit more old school and
did not see why he should
defer earnings and take
stuff on the drip and so on.
Splitting up in 2000 was
great as I could re-boot
Investment Quorum into a
predominantly fee-based
business. It is not 100% feebased
as there is commission-offset
but in the main
it is very fee-based, recurring
income, all about clients
paying a fair price for
a fair day’s work.
“Our recurring fee is not
BIOGRAPHY
Lee Robertson left the Navy in
1988 after eight years’ service
to start in financial services
with a year at Allied Dunbar.
He moved on to various roles
with HPS Financial Services
(1989-1991) and Royal
Scottish Assurance (1991-
1995) before setting up his
first IFA firm, Capulet Financial
Management, as joint
managing director. He sold
his shareholding in 2000 and
formed Investment Quorum
which now manages £110m of
client assets. He is the firm’s
chief executive and chair of its
investment committee.
MAY 2010 [www.portfolio-adviser.com] PORTFOLIO ADVISER
25
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