Some festive stats

Having yesterday completed our final commission run of 2011, we thought it might be useful to compare this year with 2010 in relation to financial performance across our network.  Statistics rarely come unencumbered by twists that render them somewhat impenetrable to easy analysis, but the search for a little compensatory festive cheer in an environment of generally bleak financial results drove us on.

And, actually, what we discovered was generally encouraging.  85% of our Members showed a significantly increased turnover in 2011, compared to the 2010 calendar year.  Some of those increases in revenues were on such a ridiculous scale that it would make little sense to report them, as the firms concerned were either recent joiners, or had been (previously) devoting so little time to financial services work that any increase would have looked impressive.

In general, focusing on those Members who had been previously active in developing their financial services proposition, the improvement from 2010 to 2011 was in excess of 100%.  For those (Members) who are interested, we are able to supply their individual firms' figures upon request.  This degree of financial resilience which, by the way, is not typical of IFA firms across the UK, should place our Members in a good position to weather challenging trading conditions next year.

Now with that general encouragement comes the usual caveats.  During 2009 and 2010, our whole network was moving onto a single practice-management platform.  It's entirely possible that in the short term this transition may have actually held back performance, and it would certainly be true to say that there is a lag when it comes to logging accounting (fee & commission) data onto the system - which means that some of that improvement may simply be a product of chronology rather than business activity.

Season's Greetings to all our Members and colleagues.