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Courtiers – A Case Study
Courting success
The sleepy Oxfordshire town of Henley is briefly pausing for breath between its main events of the summer, the Regatta and the Festival, but Jamie Shepperd and Courtiers have little opportunity to do so as rapid growth continues unabated.
Jamie has been driving the growth of Courtiers since joining in 1988, initially in a new business role before progressing to become a partner and now Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director.
Since 1982 Courtiers has grown from humble roots as an IFA providing retirement planning services to the residents of the Thames Valley region to become an investment management house controlling funds approaching £100 million.
So how has this been achieved?
Much of the growth has taken place in the last 3 years under the stewardship of Jamie and his business partner and Chief Investment Officer Gary Reynolds. It was in 2002 that they took the strategic decision to re-shape their business. They already had a reasonable client base, but much of the investment was with third party providers of pensions and investment services, so recurring revenue was only 10% of turn over.
The core of the strategy came from the identification of a niche opportunity in the private client market to provide institutional disciplines for the management of risk. At a time when many investors were still reeling from the fallout of the ‘dot com’ bubble this approach had a resonance with their target audience.
The Courtiers approach is to use the resources of much larger investment houses such as First State, Liontrust, Lloyd George, Newton, New Star, Old Mutual, M&G, Schroder to invest in their collective funds. When it comes to fund selection, the approach is strongly focused on the managers of the individual funds. They insist on direct personal contact with the managers, to give them the confidence to entrust them with their clients’ money.
Clients appreciate this approach, much as they do the chocolates or flowers that they receive on birthdays, and having increased recurring revenue to a very impressive 80% of turn over, covering total expenditure by 114% , this attention to detail and client service is clearly having the desired effect.
A key part of the strategy three years ago was to be in a position to manage and control the investments that Courtiers would be taking in-house. This necessitated a major improvement in systems, and following an evaluation of the software market they selected Pulse. A package was constructed that suited their needs at the time, and provided a platform to support their future growth. Jamie is happy to state that ‘Pulse has been a major contributor to our ability to grow over the last three years’.
He added ‘In 2002, we only had £5 million under discretionary management on Pulse, but this has grown to £65 million today and rising very rapidly as we move clients’ investments from third party providers in-house as well as taking in new money. Despite the natural increase in volumes, staff numbers have actually reduced as a result of having such an efficient system’.
The progress of the company has enabled it to invest in further new software from Pulse in the form of the modelling module, POPS, for order management and the BACS interface. These have all been bought for the purpose of streamlining the operation and minimising manual intervention.
The difference is marked: ‘Pulse now enables all portfolios to be modelled or rebalanced at the ‘click of the mouse’. By using the feature to group all bargains in the same stocks, the impact on the back office is minimised and the investment houses respond to us as we have reduced their overheads as well’, Jamie added. ‘The new modelling functionality gives us much greater control of risk by delivering improved monitoring and measurement facilities. This enables us to stay within the parameters determined by the lifestyle, income, tax and security needs of our clients.’
The next step is to take the new POPS EMX interface to provide a true straight through process, thus reducing administrative overheads further and providing more time to service new and existing clients.
Jamie is also very quick to credit his staff for the progress that the company has made. As a consequence, they are dedicated and loyal and are also well rewarded with benefits such as a company mid week stay in Paris earlier this year for all employees .
The structure is now in place to achieve their aim of having £500 million under management in 5 years time by a combination of increasing private client funds under management, increasing their fledgling but growing institutional exposure, and entering partnerships or acquiring other businesses in the sector. With the drive, dynamism and enthusiasm in the business, and the support of Pulse Software, success is theirs for the taking.