Advisers capitalise on super-rich

The Celtic Tiger may be slumbering but the money it generated is still swirling around the economy.

A generation of Irish entrepreneurs, who made their money during the 1990s boom years, is fuelling the growth of the wealth-management industry.

The bursting of the technology bubble and the bear market that followed served only to emphasise the need for specialist financial advice.

This is good news for financial advisers, especially those catering to the top end of the market.

Mr Brian Weber, who previously managed Davy's premium trading service, set up an Irish operation for Morgan Stanley Quilter just under a year ago. At the time, market rivals scoffed at the timing of the move.

However, Mr Weber says the group's first year has been a success, with clients particularly attracted by its offer of an all-encompassing fee rather than a commission-based approach.

"Where we have had success is in the specialised nature of our service," says Mr Weber. "We focus on investment management with high levels of service and a cap on the number of clients being handled by each individual investment manager."

He believes customers are also attracted by the international perspective and resources available to the group as a result of belonging to the UK wealth-management subsidiary of US banking giant Morgan Stanley. So how much do you need to tap into your own wealth manager?

The minimum, industry-wide, seems to be about €250,000.

"To achieve adequate diversification, you really need to be looking at €250,000 upwards," says Mr Weber. "People with sums below that really need to go the collective route."

There's no shortage of people in the target market. The World Wealth Report, published by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Merrill Lynch, showed that the 15,000 highest-net-worth individuals in Ireland last year controlled assets in excess of €43 billion, an average of €42.9 million each.

A survey carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers last year showed that 85 per cent of Ireland's rich are "new money" - they earned their wealth themselves. This contrasts with the experience in the rest of Europe.

The significance of this for the wealth management industry is that people tend to be more hands-on in the management of wealth they themselves have accrued compared to more traditional "family money".

"Independent financial planning advice is going to be a huge growth area as customers grow more sophisticated and regulators become more active," says Mr Weber. "At the moment, finding genuinely bespoke advice is difficult and we are one of the very few offering it."

That includes passing clients on to outside advisers in areas that it does not cover.