Mike Kellard, the chief executive of Axa Wealth, will depart the firm, it was revealed this morning.

His exit comes after recent sales of various parts of the Axa business, including the Elevate platform in April to Standard Life.

Axa released a statement to Financial Planning Today, which read: “Mike Kellard has confirmed he will be leaving Axa Wealth following the sale of the business expected to complete in Q4 2016.

“From 2010, Mike and his team have made a significant contribution to the business, leading a strategy that saw its assets triple in the space of five years and now stands at nearly £50bn.

"Mike formed AXA Wealth following the sale of AXA’s life company to Resolution back in 2010.

"AXA Wealth was created and comprised of two start-ups – Architas, a multi-manager investment offering and Elevate, a wrap platform – and, a number of assets from its international business on the Isle of Man, AXA Wealth International. The business held about £15bn of assets and was struggling to deliver sustainable profits.

“Axa Wealth has received some of the highest scores for adviser satisfaction, and previously as chief executive of Winterthur Mike is seen as pioneer of new products and services, from Sipps and drawdown in the 1990s to open architecture funds and fee-based advice in the early 2000s.

“While a number of the Axa Wealth businesses are being sold, Architas, established by Mike, has £20bn in assets and remains an integral part of Axa’s offering going forward."

Mr Kellard, who was chief executive of Winterthur Wealth Management from 2003 to 2006 when it merged with Axa, spoke to former sister title Financial Planner magazine in September 2015 about the fifth anniversary of the firm.

He described how the move was “always going to be a challenging move, some may say risky”.

He said: “We took a successful business – the then AXA Life business - and sold part of it in anticipation of how we thought the industry would reshape over the next few years. We effectively started again.

“Many companies might not have had the stomach for it! But the wider AXA Group was very supportive of us creating a much more focused retirement wealth business model. And we could see the direction the market was heading in – I felt it was the right thing to do. So, in order to be ready for the Retail Distribution Review, let alone the pension freedoms more recently, we had to make some hard decisions. But I believe it’s really paying off."

Asked what achievements he was proudest over the past five years at that time, he said: “Making sure that we’ve been ‘ready’ for all the big industry changes over recent years; we introduced a version of adviser charging a decade ahead of the RDR, we had a strong support system for firms as they transitioned through the RDR, and were fully ready to offer all the new pension freedoms to our customers on day one. We have a lean business model that makes it easier for us to adapt to change than many others.

“I’m also really proud of our people, not only delivering what financial planners need but also being so committed to things like taking part in community initiatives through volunteering or fundraising. Some 40 per cent of our employees take part in community projects regularly and so far this year they’ve raised nearly £70,000 for local charities.”

Before joining Winterthur Mr Kellard was a broker sales consultant for Legal and General for nearly a decade, before becoming a national sales manager for Norwich Union Life and Pensions.