At some point in his early career looking after the personal financial wellbeing of entrepreneurs, something rubbed off on Steve Jordan, the co-founder of Manchester-based Five Wealth.
Jordan, who had previously learned his trade at Manchester firm Dewhurst Torevell said the move to set up Five with four other colleagues was “a natural next step”.
It took him to where we find him today with a 40-strong wealth management firm with around £1.15bn funds under management, and a very deliberate strategy: remain niche, stay close to clients, and grow the right way.
Backed with a £6.7m investment 2023 by private equity investor Foresight, Jordan says the firm works almost exclusively with high net worth business owners and professionals, and keeps financial planning – not products or markets – at the centre of the relationship.
“We’ll always be financial planning-led and that has to be a personal relationship… you can’t put people in boxes and say, “you’re at a certain stage of your life, therefore you need this, this and this solution, because everybody’s different.”
On risk and volatility, Jordan is disarmingly blunt with clients: “The only thing that we can guarantee with investments is they will go down at some point. If you hold them, then they will come back up.
“One thing that I’ll say to clients… at some point, we’re going to have an annual review, and we’ll have lost money. I guarantee it… That’s how investments work.”
The firm spends most of its early meetings on the plan, not the portfolio, ensuring clients are well briefed before markets inevitably wobble.
When I push him on the biggest misnomer on professional services, that independent financial aren’t actually independent, but tied to commissions to flogging investment products, he jumps at the chance to explain how Five Wealth is different.
“We are completely independent. Our fees are our fees… they’re completely transparent, they are published on our website in pounds, in percentages, however you want to see it… There are no commissions. There’s no hidden charges anywhere. There’s no exit fees.”
That ethos pre-dates Five Wealth itself – Jordan is quick to credit his previous firm for instilling the same values – but he says the execution is distinctly their own: more informal, more growth-oriented, and tightly focused on their chosen client base.
And when much of the personal advisory space is being gobbled up by consolidators, he also makes it clear that the Foresight deal isn’t about that – it enabled a funded management buyout to support succession for one of the founding partners.
“Our growth story to Foresight was… we’ve built the business, grown it from essentially zero and we’ve got a young team with lots more growth to go at,” he says.
Five Wealth team
The pitch was that with capital behind them, Five Wealth could accelerate organic growth, invest in marketing for the first time, and selectively pursue some acquisitions – while also managing internal succession, facilitating the retirement of Chris Little, a co-founder, and to help Five Wealth “mature” into a more rounded business, a serious operational spine. Co-founders Steve Hughes, Phil Shaw, Phil Dewhurst are still very much at the forefront of the business.
“We’re not a consolidator. We don’t want to be a consolidator, but focus on what we do,” he says. “We are looking for, and are open to tactical acquisitions. But it’s not anything. It’s got to be the right fit for us.”
By that he means firms with an established client book, who maybe don’t have a firm succession plan but want to make sure their staff are looked after, he explains. “What we can offer those people is… a home for their clients… a great service and a great young team that can take on their clients and look after them for the rest of their lives and beyond, like we do with ours.”
Crucially, he says Five isn’t seeking to diversify into fashionable niches and will carry on looking after high net worth business owners and professionals, and on being the kind of custodian that advisory principals trust with their life’s work.
“If you look at where the business started with the five of us as directors, shareholders, founders, that’s completely different now,” he says. “If you look at the board now, we have three younger people that have come through, become shareholders, become directors since we founded the business.”
He says Foresight have brought business structure, and helped with developing the tools that equips him to run an even better business.
If there’s a thread Jordan returns to repeatedly, it’s the importance of bringing young people into the firm and giving them a long runway to grow.
The headcount is now just shy of 40, and a significant proportion joined as graduates – many straight from university.
“Generally, most of the team have come from university,” he explains. “We take graduates every year from Manchester. I think that works well, because we can train people, our way of advice and our culture and values of the firm, which are super important.”
That approach, he says, also embraces a strong community element, putting on events that support charities close to their heart, including Support Dogs, a national charity dedicated to increasing independence and quality of life for people with various medical conditions. They provide, train and support specialist assistance dogs including an autism assistance dog called Thunda who supports his son Franklin.
The talent strategy also feeds directly into their proposition for clients. Five Wealth positions itself as a multi-generational adviser, looking after not just wealth creators but also their children and grandchildren.
“We put a lot of value in the fact that we look after families, and we look after the next generation,” Jordan says. “We do seminars for clients’ children, clients’ grandchildren every year… about educating them about money… budgeting at university, how to understand that payslip, just little things like that.”
He says this approach is designed to tackle what he calls the “third-generation” problem, where family wealth is often dissipated:
“With our type of clients, with trusts, with family investment companies… when their kids are old enough, they’ll become stewards of that family. A lot of what clients talk about nowadays is generational wealth is often lost by the third generation… We put a lot of stock in making sure that the next generation [is] well educated and well looked after.”
On the board’s risk register, the usual suspects loom large – changing legislation, markets, and compliance – but Jordan insists the core story doesn’t change:
“Compliance in our industry is key, making sure we’re doing the right things all the time for clients, and continuing to stick to the Five Wealth story, which is high net worth business owners, professionals, financial planning – that’s the story.”
On AI, he sees opportunities, but also risks: “We’re cautiously and tactically exploring that. We’re not going to be one that jumps in first,” he says. “It sometimes doesn’t always give you the right answer.”
“AI can’t sit in front of someone and really get to know them and understand them and ask the right leading questions… What we do is, we ask the questions… it’s a sensitive job at times, you’ve really got to dig in and find out what makes people tick.”
It’s a neat encapsulation of where Five Wealth sits today: a maturing, private equity-backed advisory firm trying to blend the professionalism and scale of a larger player with the intimacy and focus of a boutique – and betting that a pipeline of young talent will help it deliver on that promise for decades to come.
