Charles Stanley says it plans to become the “UK’s leading wealth manager” by 2020 and will launch a separate Financial Planning arm as part of this strategy.

Reporting pre-tax losses for the year down from £6.1m to £300,000, the company said it would be divided into four main operating divisions following a strategic review. These are: Investment Management Services, Asset Management, Financial Planning and Charles Stanley Direct.

Charles Stanley says that the newly separated Financial Planning division's first task will be to review its operating and pricing models. “Once complete, a strategic programme will be launched to increase integration with the Investment Management Services division in order to offer these services to current clients. We will also launch a marketing programme in order to attract new clients, ” it said.

The company plans to focus in future on providing “holistic” wealth management services.

The Financial Planning division (previously part of another arm) was also reorganised during the 2016 financial year and established separately from what had been the Financial Services division. The management team was reformed and the Financial Planners within the group brought under its leadership and direction.

The Financial Planning division saw revenues rise during the year from £5.7m to £6m. The number of Financial Planners stayed the same at 27 but revenue per Financial Planner grew from £211,100 to £222,200.

The company says it intends to establish the Financial Planning division as “a core element of the group's wealth management services and to increase materially the instances in which both Financial Planning and Investment Management services are provided to a client.”
Charles Stanley plans to recruit additional Financial Planners and improve productivity by improving “operating processes utilised to transact and process business.”

Overall, for the past 12 months the group saw total revenue of £141.6m (2015: £149.7m) and group cash balances increase from £28.5m to £48.1m. Its capital adequacy ratio significantly strengthened to 151% (2015: 107%).

Paul Abberley, CEO, said: "Our three-fold priorities for the year were to arrest the decline in profitability, determine and begin to implement the strategic direction for Charles Stanley and build the foundations upon which we can drive sustainable growth. Solid progress was achieved in each.

“We have reduced our losses by £5.8m, refocused on core activities that will allow us to deliver high levels of customer satisfaction and made significant progress in terms of making the group more efficient over the long-term. We look forward to another year of progress as we pursue our aim of becoming the UK's leading wealth manager."

Charles Stanley was established in 1792 and is one of the oldest firms on the London Stock Exchange. It provides holistic wealth management services to private clients, charities and smaller institutions. It has 450 professionals located in 25 offices throughout the UK, both direct to clients and to intermediaries.

Its services include investment portfolio management and Financial Planning, supported by in-house administration and custody for investment portfolios, SIPPs and ISAs to enhance the quality of service provided. Charles Stanley Direct provides a direct to customer execution-only dealing platform for equities and funds.