AFH chief executive Alan Hudson has spoken exclusively to Financial Planning Today about his career, his company’s acquisition strategy and the Financial Planning profession. 

The interview with Mr Hudson features in the current issue of Financial Planning Today magazine.

Asked what sort of company AFH was, he said: “First and foremost, we are independent financial advisers, but we are vertically integrated because we believe that having established a client’s Financial Planning objectives, we are best placed to manage their investments to achieve them.

“We now manage £3.2bn of client assets, split roughly half and half between advisory and discretionary.”

The firm has recently made a number of acquisitions and he said the continuing policy was aimed at benefitting clients and shareholders.

“We have consistently achieved double digit organic growth.

“We buy businesses because we believe our strategy benefits shareholders and clients alike.

“In other sectors, with scale comes improved buying power which generally enables businesses to widen margins, create competitive advantage or a mixture of both.

“We have chosen strategically to reduce third-party costs for our clients wherever possible because we believe this is in the long-term interest of clients and shareholders too,” the Chartered Financial Planner said.

On the firm’s recent announcement, that it would look to absorb platform charges for clients, he said: “What I have said is that it is not a question of whether, it is a question of when we will do this.

“We believe that investment returns in the future will on average be lower than they have been historically.

“It is therefore essential that we seek to reduce third-party costs wherever possible, so clients achieve sufficient net investment returns to meet their Financial Planning objectives.

“Platforms are too expensive, and in any event the benefits of using them are disproportionately in favour of the adviser, so we think it is right that we absorb these costs.

“I accept, however, that for smaller firms this may not be viable.”

The full interview with Alan Hudson appears in the latest issue of Financial Planning Today magazine.