Swindon-based financial services firm Caerus has acquired a 370-strong network of financial advisers as it continues its rapid expansion.
The firm, set up by industry veteran and former Allied Dunbar managing director Keith Carby, has bought Paradigm Financial Advisers (PFA), an arm of Paradigm, the Cheshire financial advice business with which Caerus has had a sales arrangement for the past two years.
Caerus will retain the Paradigm name for six months before rebranding.
Mr Carby said the takeover was the latest step in a plan to make Caerus, based on Swindon’s Windmill Hill business park, a major player in the financial advice market.
PFA’s independent advisers will operate alongside Caerus’ 185 advisers in its network.
Caerus’ advisers are currently appointed representatives of PFA. Caerus will also take on PFA’s 35 support staff and PFA managing director Stuart Cresswell will remain in his role.
Mr Carby said: “When we struck an agreement with PFA in 2010, we made it clear we would be seeking regulatory permissions after three years. Paradigm’s strategic decision gives us the opportunity to make this move a few months earlier than planned.”
“Our desire to develop a distinctive, high-quality customer experience meant this was essential. Caerus would not have flourished without the support of the Paradigm leadership in our early days. We will always be grateful for that support.”
Paradigm founder Paul Hogarth added: “Over the last six months it has become clear to the team and I that the network would be better served by a business whose future is more closely aligned with this area of the market.”
Caerus made a £1.2m pre-tax profit in the year ending December 31, 2011 against a £1.4m loss the previous year.
Mr Carby has been involved with many of the Swindon area’s most successful financial services firms since entering the industry in 1981 with Hambro Life. He became sales director and then managing director of Allied Dunbar, a business widely-acknowledged as revolutionising the industry in the 1980s. He was then one of three founders and first managing director of Cirencester-based J. Rothschild Assurance in 1991 (now St. James’s Place). He has also held chief executive positions at Inter-Alliance and Swindon-based Openwork and is co-Founder of the Financial Services Forum and a founding non-executive director of Metro Bank.
