The Chief Executive of IFG Group has said the company is willing to invest in their advice arm – Saunderson House – if it is not sold.
After publishing its results in 2017, John Kotter has claimed that IFG Group had received a numerous amount of approached for Saunderson House, which it is currently “working through”.
in reference to these advances on Saunderson House, Kotter has said, “You don’t want an open-ended process. We are working through these approaches at the moment and I think we will have a view in a reasonably short timeframe as to what these approaches are and whether it makes sense to pursue or not.’
“If we can get an appropriate value and it makes sense for Saunderson House then we would undertake a sale, if it doesn’t, then we would continue as we are doing.
“Over the last four years, we have grown the assets under advice from £3bn to £5bn. It has grown over the last three to four years from a small, niche player to something that has much more capacity to expand into other markets.”
“If we don’t sell we will be looking at how we continue that growth.”
Looking into performance, IFG Group posted a loss pre-tax of £400,000 for 2017; this is comparable to a profit of £6.4m in the 2016 financial year. This considerable loss was as a result of a substantial ‘legacy problem’, brought on by “the administration and documentation of advice”, for which £1.6m was related to Saunderson House.
The £1.6m provision was made to combat legacy issues relating to advice given to a “small number of clients” due to a “particular set of complex circumstances” in relation to ‘defined benefit transfers’.
