Acquisition establishes Northern Ireland presence

• Acquisition and merger of Ralston Bennett Financial Planning and Aspects Financial into a single company creates Wren Sterling’s first permanent Northern Ireland presence
• Callisto Wealth will join Wren Sterling’s Wilmslow office, following the November acquisition of Morfitt & Turnbull

The Wren Sterling Group has added around 2,000 clients and £400m of assets with the purchase of three firms – two in Northern Ireland together with a further business in St Helens.

Ralston Bennett Financial Planning and its appointed representative business, Aspects Financial, will combine to create Wren Sterling’s first permanent base in Northern Ireland, with the two offices located in Holywood and Newtownards, respectively.  The two firms comprise seven financial advisers between them and serve clients across Northern Ireland in the private client and corporate client markets.

Separately, Callisto Wealth serves around 140 households from its St Helens base and will become part of Wren Sterling’s North-West hub in Wilmslow.

2023 is set to be a key year for Wren Sterling’s acquisition strategy with four acquisitions already completed and a growing and significant pipeline.  The Group has also recently relaunched Magnus, its DFM solution, following its acquisition in November 2022.

CEO, James Twining, commented: “I would like to welcome all our new colleagues from Ralston Bennett and Aspects Financial into the Wren Sterling Group.  Our move into Northern Ireland is strategically very important for us. We already have clients in Northern Ireland who will be better served by a local adviser, and we see real opportunity to grow in what is a large and attractive market. We intend to support our new Northern Ireland management team through further acquisitions, while enabling them to grow organically through the strategic change programme we’re executing elsewhere in Wren Sterling. This will simplify our operations and reduce client charges through a preferred platform strategy, alongside a refreshed proposition and brand.

“We are also excited to welcome Andrew Platt and his team at Callisto Wealth. As a Chartered Financial Planner Andrew has long-lasting and trusted relationships with his clients and wants to spend more time helping his clients and less time on the non-client facing and increasingly onerous aspects of running a regulated financial services business.  We are ideally placed to enable him and other owners facing similar challenges the opportunity to do just that, by leveraging our centralised compliance, operations, finance, HR and IT infrastructure. These are exciting times to be at Wren Sterling.”