We are experiencing material success in helping our member firms recruit new advisers at no cost, saving them an estimated £498,000 in the last year alone.¹
We launched our individual adviser recruitment service for members just two years ago. It is available to network members at no extra cost, meaning they do not pay a penny in recruitment fees.
This enables growing ARs to avoid the challenges of working with recruiters who may not fully understand the industry or their businesses. Instead, they can benefit from targeted placements that are highly likely to succeed, while avoiding significant financial risk. Typical recruitment agency fees for advisers are around £5,000 plus VAT, which cannot be recovered.
In the last year, we placed 83 advisers through the service, building on its initial success with a 22% increase in placements compared with the previous year.²
Lesley Sharkey, Recruitment Director at Stonebridge, said:
“This is a dedicated and ringfenced resource exclusively for our members, allowing us to focus on identifying the most suitable registered individual for each opportunity. Because our priority is finding the right fit, we are not constrained by the need to make a placement quickly in order to generate revenue.
“This shines through in our success rate, which is why more members are using the service than ever before.”
The service is also becoming increasingly popular among our members, with a third more firms using it to hire in the last 12 months compared with the previous year. We are currently handling 130 vacancies, ranging from employed opportunities requiring a minimum of two years’ experience to self-employed roles with substantial compensation packages and lead generation responsibility.
Some opportunities are for estate agent-based advisers, while most are with traditional AR firms. Many of these roles give successful advisers the chance to grow a business within a business, with varying degrees of mentoring and autonomy. Top-end compensation can reach £200,000 per year in some cases, with typical packages for experienced advisers sitting around £85,000.
Our recruitment team conducts a comprehensive consultation with each AR business principal to help identify the type of person their firm truly needs. We establish the rationale behind each hire and often help shape a change in strategy by advising on the member’s business model, remuneration structure and benefits package.
Sharkey added:
“Individual adviser recruitment can be a real and constant headache for AR firms. It is sometimes very costly, usually risky and always extremely time-consuming.
“We solve all that with zero charge to our members. At just a couple of years old, the service is proving to be hugely valuable and mutually beneficial.
“We’re expanding our network rapidly by bringing new ARs on board, but we also want to support our existing members who have their own growth ambitions. Many now rely on our team’s expertise in this and other areas to overcome growing pains, allowing them to concentrate on what they do best.”
We remain the fastest-growing mortgage and protection network by number of AR firms, having added more member firms than any other comparable network for the fourth consecutive year.
¹Based on a typical recruitment agency fee of £5,000 per placement + 20% VAT that cannot be recovered.
²Year to the end of July each year.
