Nationals target small firms in New Year recruitment drive

National IFAs have launched a recruitment drive in the run-up to the New Year by inundating firms with invites to join their businesses.

Tenet Group, Best Practice and Moneygate have all sent recruitment emails in the last week.

Most advisers are on contracts with between one to three months' notice, making October and November an ideal time for firms to recruit.

Moneygate - who last month said they hoped to complete seven IFA acquisitions in the next six months - have also sent emails to advisers offering to buy their firms.

But advisers have questioned the nationals' approaches, saying their recruitment tactics are impersonal and unsuccessful.

"I find them quite amusing," said Martin Bamford [pictured], MD of Informed Choice, "particularly when they are addressed personally and the sender clearly hasn't done their research." Until recently, his firm also used to receive regular cold calls from St. James's Place.

An email sent by Moneygate to a mailing list last week begins ‘Dear Colleague', and offers advisers the chance to sell their business '@ an average of 6x trail & 6x profit [sic]'.

Phillip Bray, marketing manager at Nottingham-based Investment Sense, said nationals needed to adopt a more personal approach when attempting to recruit advisers.

"As an adviser I quite often got cold-calls from St. James's Place", he said. But the nationals' recruitment process could turn potential new recruits off. "We now get a lot of CVs from advisers who work [at nationals] - it works both ways."

Recruiting advisers to start in January makes sense, Bamford said, because it avoids an unnecessary year of FSA fees.