Lester takes up his position after a brief stint at Argonaut Capital Partners, having joined from Neptune at the same time McCarthy joined Investec from Martin Currie.
His role is to run relationships with three main groups – the national IFAs and networks; ratings agencies such as Morningstar OBSR, Rayner Spencer Mills and Standard & Poor’s; and the life companies, both on- and offshore.
The clue is in the title, as all the relationships Lester will be running are ‘strategic’ partnerships, the aim being to focus on specific intermediaries and inter-connecting organisations rather than trying to cover all of them.
As David Aird, managing director, UK, at Investec AM explained, this is part of a strategy that has been running for the past two years. The logic is the way the investment world is moving, with RDR at its core, means that the intermediary member firms of the the nationals and networks have a huge influence on fund flows into panels of funds and managed solutions – put together at least in part using rating agency research – they can outsource to fund-of-funds providers or they can use a model portfolio run by a life company.
Lester’s hire is part of Investec’s promotion of the propositions it runs for all three categories.
“RDR is the biggest change in the adviser world since the Big Bang in 1986 so our relationships now have to be more strategic, we have to offer much more value,” Aird told me.
“As a result our sales teams need a different skill set as we move from being a product provider to a trusted adviser.”
