RAVENSCROFT was founded in 2005 by Jon Ravenscroft, the current chief executive, and Andy Stewart.
‘Ravenscroft has been extremely successful in Guernsey,’ said Jersey managing director Haydn Taylor. ‘What the group wanted to do was to replicate the success that they have had in Guernsey, in Jersey. And theoretically when you look at the populations, the Jersey business one day should be bigger than the Guernsey business.’
A lot has changed in the five years since Mr Taylor joined. The group had just over a billion pounds of assets under administration then; now it’s topping six billion.
‘Those assets have come from organic growth, attracting new clients to the business and making a number of key acquisitions as well,’ said Mr Taylor. ‘The most recent acquisition that we announced
was the purchase of Royal London’s cash business.’
Ravenscroft had already started a treasury desk to look after client cash, but when they bought Royal London Asset Management CI and Royal London Custody Services CI, which manage both private-client and institutional cash, that brought with it over £2bn in assets.
It’s not the only acquisition: last year the group bought Bullion Rock, which provides precious-metal dealing and custody facilities.
‘We essentially have five or six key pillars to the business,’ explained Mr Taylor. ‘In the early days those were execution-only stockbroking trading, advisory stockbroking and discretionary portfolio management, which are the sort of traditional services provided by stockbroking firms.
‘We’ve expanded that out now to recognise the fact that people do need their cash managing for them and might want to invest in gold and silver, and they might actually want to have that located near to them. So the Bullion Rock business, for example – the assets are all located in Guernsey.’
Right now, Jersey accounts for around 15% of the assets under administration in the group. The big change, said Mr Taylor, was when they acquired a team
of advisory stockbrokers around two
years ago, which brought significant assets with them.
‘We’re looking to grow that significantly,’ he said.
‘But what we are very keen to do is to find the right teams of people. It was a long process, finding the last team that we bought, and it might be a long process to find the next one, or it might be around the corner.
‘What we really want is people who are going to gel with the team that we have. We want highly experienced individuals with strong reputations.’
Stockbroking has changed significantly since Mr Taylor first started in the business. ‘I think the process has got very much more professional over the last 20 years or so. When I started in broking, there was no head of IT and there was no compliance team. I think regulation has certainly ensured that, from our point of view as an industry, we are providing the right sort of investments to the right sort of people.’
One of the other big changes Mr Taylor has seen in the last 20 years is that women are increasingly making investment decisions, whether that’s through inheritance or self-made wealth. There are also many more women financial professionals, including trust company staff.
‘We are running events now where our female team will stand up and talk to women about investments. And, you know, those will be solely female environments where people are perhaps a little bit more comfortable asking questions and that sort of thing. That’s a big focus for us.’
Starting a new business in Jersey’s established finance industry environment isn’t always easy. ‘I think in the early days with the group, it was difficult convincing trustees that we were capable of managing significant assets. We had a little over a billion of assets under administration at the time, and we had a small team in Jersey. And it’s amazing how much attention people pay to the number of people you have in the office. So something that we did was to take a new team on to give us much more critical mass, and we moved to new offices just to give us a little bit more presence. That made an enormous amount of difference.’
It wasn’t the only factor. Two years ago, Guernsey-based billionaire Stephen Lansdown, who co-founded Hargreaves Lansdown, the British financial services firm, took an interest in Ravenscroft and became their chairman, as well as a major shareholder.
‘That was a step change for us because Stephen is very highly thought of. So Stephen brought something new to the business, and it’s amazing having somebody of his calibre and foresight on board. And there are a number of things we’re doing at the moment that are very much as a result of the strategy that’s been put together between Stephen, Jon Ravenscroft, the chief executive, and Mark Bousfield (group managing director), as well as the senior management team.
‘So we are, for example, investing in new systems, we’re investing in new offices in Guernsey and we’re opening in new jurisdictions as well.
‘We’ve just announced a joint venture that we are setting up in Monaco. So we’ve got Tavira Ravenscroft there and we’ll be looking to replicate what we do in Jersey and Guernsey, in a number of other like-minded jurisdictions.’
Getting staff, particularly good compliance staff, is hard in the islands and very competitive, and Mr Taylor says it has taken time to find the right people. ‘In Guernsey, we have recruited a lot of very good staff.
‘I think the reputation of the business enabled us to do that. It has a very high profile in Guernsey and we hope that we’re growing that profile here, but it takes time; and, in fact, the brand is only about seven years old. The business used to be called Cenkos before, so we had to start with pretty much a new brand.
‘It all started to happen when Ravenscroft bought Jacksons and Sandpiper. I think it brought the name to the fore. And it wasn’t actually Ravenscroft itself that was buying those businesses. When it happened people went: “Who is Ravenscroft? We thought they were stockbrokers, but now we’ve heard they bought a car business and they bought a food retailer.”
‘People began to understand that, actually, we bought them for Bailiwick Investments, the fund that we run which invests in local companies. So that really began to put us on the map.
‘What is something that we haven’t perhaps achieved is actually getting people to understand the ownership of those businesses. I see quite a lot of social-media stuff which is very misinformed. They think that these businesses are owned by big UK institutions, when the reality is the investors in those businesses are actually a very wide spectrum of local residents. And that might be people who hold Bailiwick Investments in a share portfolio or high-net-worth investors. It’s a complete range of people in both islands.’
Ravenscroft has three main funds: the Channel Islands Property Fund, Bailiwick Investments and the Financial Services Opportunities Fund. They have also recently launched a new fund for high-net-worth investors, with a minimum of half a million pounds, and that is going to invest in Grade A commercial property, but properties with development potential.
‘What we’ve done successfully is to use these funds as a conduit to meet high- net-worth people coming into the Island who are interested in investing in the Island. Quite a number of them are keen to demonstrate that they are investing in the Island, so the funds we have are a great door opener.’
Some of the investors also bring their own experience to bear on the businesses that are in the investment portfolios, but one of the other differentiators is that Ravenscroft is also invested alongside their clients. ‘So of all the investment products we run, we can usually sit there and say, well, actually, Channel Island Property Fund, I’m invested in that, Bailiwick Investments I’m invested in, and so on and so forth.
‘When I talk to people about my pension fund, for example, I’m very proud to point out that Ravenscroft Investment Management manage my pension fund, and that I think gives people confidence in us as well.’
The group as a whole is doing well. The 2017 annual report saw revenues up 15% and they are keen to keep investing. ‘We are very fast moving; we’re very acquisitive.
‘So in the Channel Island Property Fund we’ve bought a number of grade A properties on the Esplanade. We bought Liberation House, we bought Windward House, then Sandpiper bought the Liberty Wharf complex, and we’ve taken stakes in a number of smaller businesses in the Island as well.
‘So that’s what makes it a really exciting business to be in.
‘We would like the Jersey business to ultimately be bigger than the Guernsey business. We have a very strong flow of clients coming to us, so our organic growth is strong, but we really want to take the business in Jersey to the next level.’
