Finding the right partner for a managed portfolio service.
Francis Clark Financial Planning set up a white-label managed portfolio service for their clients, but as the effects of COVID-19 played out and markets stagnated, they realised they needed a change. Managing Director Chris Reah explains how they found the right solution.
Finding the right partner for a managed portfolio service.
What was the challenge you faced?
A: We had a previous provider who had built portfolios for us with about £280 million invested and a shared mandate. After COVID-19 came along, the portfolios were not performing well, and when that happens, you need a relationship with the investment managers that helps support your clients. We felt that support was lacking and that our existing provider could have been more proactive with ideas for changes in strategy.
Another issue was the collateral they provided for our advisers, which was not easy to pass to our clients. Even the most sophisticated clients want information explained in terms they can understand.
So, we began to look for an alternative partner.
Why did you select SEI?
A: Obviously, you want to see evidence of investment performance and how this is created, but there’s more to it than that. We wanted a real partnership with a company that understood the relationship between our investment committee, advisers, and most importantly, our clients.
Second, we wanted help for our advisers to explain to clients what was happening with their investments. That is essential for the client’s trust in their adviser, and SEI was able to offer strong communication support. It sounds like a small thing, but their experts are eager to turn up in person to talk to our advisers.
£500m
Assets under management
4%
Performance improvement
£9m
Benefit to clients
What benefits have you seen from the relationship with SEI?
A: On average, across the various portfolios, there was about a 4% improvement in performance over the first year, and overall, our clients were £9 million better off.*
SEI has made us feel like equal partners in the relationship. They have made people available for education days and adviser briefings, and they have built strong relationships with our advisers.
Has there been a specific situation where SEI has been put to the test?
A: With Liberation Day and other factors, it’s not been an easy market, and that has been an acid test for our partnership with SEI. They have helped our advisers stay informed and understand what is being done, so they could do the same for the end clients. When things get challenging, a lot of investment managers start to distance themselves. SEI did not do that.
SEI has helped us grow our own business.
How smooth was the process of setting up with SEI?
A: The scale of what we were doing was a challenge. We had hundreds of millions invested in the previous portfolios—you can’t just wake up one morning, press a button and move that money. We had to give clients our advice and help them understand why we were doing this. SEI gave us significant support through that process, mainly in winning hearts and minds, and practical help in moving the assets.
We got it done in six months. It is extraordinary to move a whole investment book in an advised process in that time.
Has the relationship with SEI expanded?
A: The relationship has grown with ease. The initial pot was about £280 million; today SEI manages in the region of £500 million for us.**
And SEI has helped us grow our own business, attending events for existing and prospective clients, which has really helped us in the conversations. They understand that we are growing our business, and they have a role to play in that.
When things are challenging a lot of investment managers run for the hills and become very distant from the clients. SEI absolutely did not do that.
Have you lost any control by partnering with such a large group?
A: SEI is a major US-based company. We are a significant firm in our market, but we are obviously much smaller. So, there was a worry that we might be too small to make our voice heard. But that has not been the case.
Our investment management committee convene formally every quarter and informally about once a month. We compare notes and analysis, and there’s been a real humility and refreshing openness from SEI to engaging with us at that level.
What has been the feedback from your advisers and your clients?
A: The advisers have been really pleased by their relationship with SEI. Part of that is the accessibility to the managers and the level of educational support they provide.
There are also a significant number of clients who want to hold investment managers to account, so, it’s quite important for us to be able to co-present with the investment manager. With SEI, we have integrated communications—we’ve done live webinars, educational videos, LinkedIn communications, and client events. The materials are technically sophisticated but written in a language clients can understand.
We regularly survey clients, and they tell us they really like the access they get to SEI. Basically, our clients are telling us: “We think you made a good choice.”
In their own words: Francis Clark’s journey with SEI.
Watch the video to find out how Francis Clark transformed their investment strategy—and why their clients are £9 million better off.
Caroline Deutsch:
Hello, I'm Caroline Deutsch, the head of marketing for SEI in the EMEA region, and I'm joined by Chris Reah, who is managing director of Francis Clark Financial Planning. Welcome. So we're here to talk about the relationship with SEI. Can you start by telling us a little bit about that partnership and what we do for Francis Clark?
Chris Reah:
Yes, of course. So firstly, let me just explain who Francis Clark Financial Planning are. So we are a regional financial planning business, independent financial advisors. We sit within an accountancy practice, Francis Clark, and we have 20 advisors and we direct about a billion pounds worth of clients' assets. So one of our central questions, one of our superpowers as a business is making sure that the investment management solutions that we provide for our clients are the absolutely optimal ones, and that we work really strongly and in partnership with our investment managers. About three years ago when I was starting my role as a managing director, we looked at the investment management proposition, at the time, we already had essential investment proposition in place, and we were becoming increasingly unhappy with how those services were provided to us. It was very important to us that whoever we partnered with in this area was able to provide a whole range of support to us as a financial planning business.
Caroline Deutsch:
Great. And what were the sort of specific challenges or opportunities you felt that partnering with SEI would solve or power?
Chris Reah:
So I think there's three, things in my role there's three things you're looking at in terms of central investment proposition, two of them are very obvious, the performance of your investment managers, the cost that you're going to pass on to clients. But it's really the third piece of this, which was most important to us, and that is about the partnership that we have with whoever provides their services to us. So these are things like the capability that the firm will bring to helping our advisors advise in the best possible way, the capability that a firm will bring to us to enable us to talk to our clients in a way in which they can understand, and a way in which is useful to help 'em make sense of the world. A partnership where we can have input into how portfolios work, a partnership where we can have access to all of the power that an investment management company brings in terms of research and in terms of designing how they build portfolios. So it's in that third area really that we were focusing on. The industry is full of people who would talk to you about their performance and their charging. The industry is not full of people who talk to you about partnership.
Caroline Deutsch:
I think partnership is a theme here and for me, when you think about partnership, it's not just about the good times, is it? It's also about the challenging times. Have you got any examples of working with SEI where that's really been a strong part?
Chris Reah:
Very much so, and as I sit here today with a few months from Trump delivering his Liberation Day speech, and that provided quite an early stage for us, a really sort of vivid opportunity of getting the most out of the partnership. It was a moment that for many investors was very concerning. Volatility went through the roof, people became very concerned about what the direction of the American administration was, and I think that was a really early test for us in terms of our partnership between Francis Clark and SEI about how we were going to manage our messaging to our advisors, how we are going to manage our messaging to our clients. So that was a really important moment and it gave us that sort of early test and we were really, really impressed and really reassured by the way in which SEI supported us through that.
There's an interesting angle in this as well. SEI, of course is at its heart as an American firm and a lot of the problems that people, investors perceived were coming out of America. So it was a really interesting moment for us to be able to sort of challenge and push and to try to make sense of actually what was going on. And that test, SEI passed with flying colors, we felt really reassured by the way in which they were able to help us describe to our clients and to our advisors what was happening, and to really make that experience for the clients a much more tolerable one than it might've been otherwise.
Caroline Deutsch:
Well, that's great to hear. So it's not just about you, it's about others in your firm and your advisors. What kind of feedback or how are they talking about this partnership with SEI?
Chris Reah:
So a lot of our advisors have been with our firm a long time. So they've grown up through a sort of classic IFA evolution where the firm would've made its own investment decisions and its own investment selections, and then moving to a central investment proposition. If I'm completely candid, I think the advisors have lost faith a little bit in the idea of a central investment proposition because our former provider wasn't doing many of these things, which I'm talking about. So they've been reinvigorated, I would say, by having a firm to work alongside. They have very individual and some quite personal relationships with the staff in SEI and they really, really value that somebody to go to outside of our own firm to talk to about these really important issues for our clients. So as we sit here today, they're thrilled that we made the move and I think it really has brought a different dimension to the way in which they advise.
Caroline Deutsch:
That's really positive. So just finally, what advice might you give to someone else in the market who's maybe looking at SEI and looking at this kind of proposition? And what advice would you give?
Chris Reah:
I think I would say you need to go through a process. We went through a process. We took our time, we went and looked at the marketplace. We got very, very clear about what it was that we wanted. I imagine most of what we wanted is going to be pretty similar for many IFA firms in the marketplace. So that gave us, by running a really thorough process, it just gave us the integrity to say that we believed we had picked the firm with absolutely the best fit. But I would encourage anybody else to go through that process. And we are really very happy with the choice that we've made. And it has, as I say, fundamentally changed the relationship that we have with our clients. And I think the sophistication of the way in which we advise.
Caroline Deutsch:
Thank you. It sounds like a really great partnership on both sides.
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Important information
This is a marketing communication.
*As of 14 May 2025.
**As of 31 July 2025.
Past performance does not predict future returns.
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