Shore Financial Planning director Ben Yearsley (pictured) took to Twitter earlier this week to vent his frustration at events in London organised by certain fund groups beginning before 9am. He says this start time is simply too early for those who travel from areas outside of the capital such as Bristol, Cambridge or the North.
Writing on Twitter, Yearsley said: “It’s all very well inviting non London advisers and wealth managers to your conference @leggmason but did you actually think about those travelling to London for a pre 9am start? I doubt it… Typical London bias of FM industry.”
Yearsley told Portfolio Adviser: “If you are coming from Bristol you are leaving the house at 5.30am. If you are coming from Scotland or the north of England, or wherever, you can’t physically get there. Well, you can, but by the time you get to lunch time, you are bloody knackered.”
Regulation change
There was a time when fund groups would pay for their event attendees to stay in a hotel the night before, but Mifid II regulation, which came to force in January, put the kibosh on that as it introduced inducement bans for firms providing independent investment advice and portfolio management services.
This has had a widespread impact on the amount of hospitality wealth managers and fund selectors can accept from fund groups.
Yearsley says: “When it started at 9am before and they put you up the night before, that was fine but now most groups can’t do that so it makes a 9am start impossible. It’s not being lazy, it’s being realistic and from a cost perspective, travelling from anywhere at peak time is probably two or three times the cost.”
Hector Kilpatrick, chief investment officer at Edinburgh-based Cornelian Asset Management, says if it is impossible to travel down for an event or meeting for an early start then he and his team go down the night before and Cornelian picks up the bill. If it is just a single meeting then it is likely to be a telephone or video conference.
“Cornelian pays for all the investment team’s travel expenses incurred as necessary,” he says. “Our location should not and does not dictate who we meet, whether it is third party fund managers or company management team of listed UK companies.”
Improving attitude
Tom Sparke, investment manager at Gibbs Denley, based in Cambridge, says he has seen fund groups improve their attitude towards event start times over the past 10 years.
“There have been a few times when we have written on feedback forms, ‘Please start your conference at 9.30am or 10am for the out-of-towners’ and it seems to have worked,” he says. “Over the years a lot of conferences have moved back from a 9am start.”
After a quick glance at recent events in his diary, Sparke cites more leisurely start times of 10am for a Goldman Sachs event, 11am for Axa IM and 9.45am for Janus Henderson.
Being productive
Sparke and his team do attend conferences and events in London and undertake a lot of phone and web-based meetings, but he says an increasingly common and productive approach is to visit a London-based asset manager, book a meeting room and meet with several managers throughout the day.
“The guys have realised we want to see the whites of people’s eyes and in most instances, it is appropriate for us to do that. If they really want us to invest they will put the meetings on and invite us down. There is willingness in most places.”
But do managers ever visit him in Cambridge? “Occasionally we get some that do the rounds,” he says. “There are a few wealth managers up here and then over to the east towards Norwich and Newmarket, so if a rep has a manager with them they can fill a day.”
On the road
M&G is one of the management groups Yearsley singled out as bucking up its ideas in terms of events. The group told Portfolio Adviser that each September it runs a three-week ‘Meet the Managers’ roadshow which goes to 11 cities across England Scotland and Wales. Last year’s events attracted more than 650 clients in person and an additional 130 joined a live web stream of the London leg.
The manager also participates in the Joint Investment Forum each January which takes place in 10 cities across the country, largely the same as those for its Meet the Managers event.
Similarly, Fidelity International has run 23 group events with portfolio managers and investment directors outside of London; two in Scotland, one in Northern Ireland, six across the North of England, four in the South West, two in the South, two in the Midlands, three in the East and three in the South East.
The firm’s flagship London events in the Spring and Autumn start no earlier than 11am and finish no later than 5pm to allow enough time for travel to and from the event.
Russell Lancaster, head of intermediary sales at Fidelity International, says: “Clients who attend these meetings regularly feedback how important this access is to their business and we continue to invest in improving the programme each year. This year, for example, we have expanded our programme to include our Women’s Investment Network events, specifically targeted at female advisers and wealth managers, to encourage diversity within our industry.”
Shooting themselves in the foot
There is no denying that a large percentage of assets come from London and that is likely to increase given big wealth management players such as Brewin Dolphin, Rathbones and Charles Stanley run their investment processes and fund lists from London, particularly post-RDR.
Yearsley accepts this and admits that being based in Bristol, he does get to see a lot of UK-based fund managers that visit the city to see the “Mighty Boosh” (Hargreaves Lansdown). But even then it is only about half of managers and hardly ever those based abroad because when they are flown in, they remain in London.
He adds: “There is a big world out there and fund groups are in danger of shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring the regions.
“It sounds a bit of a whinge and I don’t want it to come across as that, but there is money outside of London and you need to cater for it.”
