Taylor legacy stalks champion of consumers

Business Opinion: There is an interesting little software company based up in the Guinness Enterprise Centre in Dublin's Liberties called 3Q Solutions.

According to its website it was "founded by a group of financial services industry professionals, and skilled technologists" and "builds visionary wealth management products" that generate new ways for financial services companies "to maintain and increase financial service revenues from their high net worth and mass affluent customer bases".

Roughly translated, this means 3Q is in the business of selling software that helps the sellers of financial products such as pensions and insurance analyse their clients to ensure they are selling them everything they possibly can. Its customers (again according to the website www.3Q-solutions.com) include:

Friends First.

A leading insurance provider of life and pensions products.

A leading European building society.

A credit union association.

A sophisticated IFA who services high net worth individuals.

A mortgage broker association with several hundred thousands of clients.

According to the website 3Q has taken these organisations "on a journey which allows them to maximise their capability and increase existing share of wallet". Exactly whose wallet is being shared is not specified, but it is safe to assume that it is the wallet or wallets of the financial services companies' clients.

So...who is behind this company, which has as its objective helping financial services companies get as big as possible a share of people's wallets?

Well...one of the largest shareholders is Eddie Hobbs, "consumer advocate" and personal finance television-evangelist. Mr Hobbs, who is also the strategic development manager of the company, holds 1,958 ordinary shares in the company, or roughly 18 per cent of the ordinary equity, according to the most recently filed annual return. Enterprise Ireland owns 87,500 cumulative redeemable preference shares.

The other two large shareholders are Colin Furniss and Raymond Young, both of whom own similar stakes to Mr Hobbs. According to the 3Q annual return, the three men are also directors of another business, Foresight Financial Solutions.

However, the most recent annual return for that company shows only Furniss and Young as directors and shareholders. According to the most recently filed set of accounts, it is a €2.54 company that had creditors of €126,974 at the end of 2003. What it does is not clear, but presumably it's related to Hobbs's activities as a "financial adviser".

Hobbs is listed in the 3Q annual return as a director of two other companies, Financial Development & Marketing and Customised ARFs. He and Mary Fehily-Hobbs are the only shareholders in these companies, which are a €3 and €100 company respectively, according to their latest company office filings.

His final directorship, according to the 3Q annual return, is the Consumers' Association of Ireland, and it is in this role that Hobbs is best known, having re-invented himself in the last few years as a consumer champion after suffering some collateral damage after the collapse of Tony Taylor's financial service empire in the mid-1990s. Hobbs has become the public face of the association on financial issues despite his obvious conflicts of interest, given his stake in 3Q and his day job as a financial adviser.

Such has been his success in this role that RTÉ chose him as the presenter of its personal finance series Show me the Money, and the station apparently has big plans for him in the autumn.

It is Hobbs's work on behalf of the consumer association - rather than his efforts to help financial services companies increase their share of customers' wallets - that landed his latest directorship. Last week the Minister for Enterprise Trade & Employment nominated him to the interim board of the National Consumer Agency. Surprisingly, the official announcement tags Hobbs as a "consumer advocate" rather than "share of wallet expansion expert".

Unfortunately, perhaps, for Hobbs this latest feather in his consumer champion hat was rather overshadowed by reports that he still faces fallout from his time as one of Tony Taylor's business partners.

IFSRA, the financial regulator, has sought a number of files from Paddy McSwiney, the liquidator of Taylor's companies, as it is following up a complaint about Hobbs from Taylor himself. Taylor was released from jail two years ago after being convicted in 2001 of fraud following the collapse of his business. Hobbs ran one of the companies in the Taylor group until a number of months prior to the collapse.

It also emerged that IFSRA's investigations are delaying McSwiney from tidying up the loose ends of the Taylor liquidation, which may include applying to the High Court to have Hobbs and three others individuals restricted from acting as directors because of their actions whilst directors of Taylor Asset Management.

Should this happen, it would make things quite embarrassing for the fledgling National Consumer Agency, not to mention 3Q-solutions.

Hobbs, however, does not appear to do embarrassment.