The wealth management firm recently spoke to this news service about its ambitions and strategy, reflecting on a raft of hires it has made and how its proposition resonates, not just in pandemic-hit times, but more broadly.

Plurimi Group, a UK-based wealth management firm, has hired a raft of senior figures over recent months, signalling its continued ambitions to be a strong firm with a “boutique” look and feel, and one giving ambitious private bankers room for manoeuvre. We spoke to Ramzy Rasamny, who built the firm in 2007 – a year before the financial crash. The business now has 49 full-time staff across London, Gibraltar and Dubai. Two years ago the firm completed the sale of a large minority stake to Toscafund Asset Management, driving further growth. 

WealthBriefing asked Plurimi about its strategy and views on the state of the wealth sector. 

WB: Describe how the firm positions itself
Plurimi: The main ethos of the firm is to offer our clients solutions to manage their wealth across multiple custodians, jurisdictions and investment services. We believe our model is compelling in that sense. Our clients have access to a breadth and depth of opportunity that may not be available at a private bank or single provider model, for instance.

The organisation is based in London, Gibraltar and Dubai. Are there plans to add to the global footprint? 
We believe that our solution-driven business model is very attractive for experienced bankers and their clients, and something which could be replicated on a multi-jurisdictional basis. While our focus remains on growing our London and Dubai businesses, we would consider new locations on an opportunistic basis. 

About two years ago, Toscafund took a minority stake in Plurimi, and I see people such as Michael Kerr-Dineen are on the Plurimi board. Can you explain what has been the impact of TF’s involvement, what access and benefits it brings to both sides, and why the transaction was agreed?
The purpose of the transaction was to support Plurimi’s growth and development strategy both in the UK and in Dubai. Fabrizio Cesario and Michael Kerr-Dineen were appointed as board members. They bring a wealth of experience across the banking and wealth management industry and remain keenly involved on a strategic level. 

We often hear that “scale” is a big deal in wealth management these days, and yet on the other side people like the feel of a “boutique” wealth manager. Where on this spectrum does Plurimi sit?
Plurimi is a boutique wealth management firm. Our ecosystem allows us to help clients navigate the financial marketplace and to find the best solutions for their specific needs. The financial world can be very complex and often confusing, especially for clients not familiar with our industry. 

There are many great firms out there which themselves have immense scale, but no one firm can excel at everything. Understanding the advantages between these institutional players is paramount and that is a core part of what we do. Our experience across the industry allows us to work with our clients to determine which firm or selection of firms may be best suited for their specific needs whether it be portfolio management, trading, financing, administration and so on. 

Scale is important in that it helps Plurimi to be known as a preferred external partner across the industry. We can then use this reputation and our size to get better access, pricing and an overall enhanced service on behalf of our clients. Scale is important at the firm level as it ultimately benefits our clients, but their experience remains individualised, with Plurimi acting as the one stop shop into the marketplace.

With whom do you work in terms of any custodial banking, back-office support, etc? Are you working with specific outsourced providers for tech, other? What do you use as your main CRM for clients? 
We work across the marketplace. Currently we work with over 18 custodial providers and private banks with booking access in the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore and the US. We also have relationships with a range of leading investment management firms, trading teams and investment banks. Several of our initiatives, including consolidated reporting and private asset administration, are outsourced to leading firms in their fields. We view outsourcing as a strategic decision that allows us to focus on our core competencies.

Is there a typical type of client and, if so, can you describe him/her?
We have a wide set of clients at Plurimi, ranging from pension funds, family offices, and high net worth individuals across several jurisdictions. We don’t really have a “typical” client at Plurimi but rather we attract clients who understand the benefits of our platform and value the relationship with their advisors. When we put these two together, we offer a family office feel for those clients who are not ready to set up their own structures due to time constraints, scale or experience. 

Are you taking on clients from specific jurisdictions at the moment? Have people from Hong Kong been in touch? 
Our model is built around recruiting high quality and experienced relationship management teams with proven track records. Each team will have a distinct regional focus and as long as we believe in the quality of the team and can support the clients through our platform, we would be happy to incorporate them into our business plan. Put another way, we don’t approach new opportunities from a regional perspective, but rather we sponsor teams and their business plans.    

There have been a good number of hires over the past 12 months. Are these hires desired to tackle or build specific areas of expertise? How would you describe today’s talent pool when it comes to finding people? Is it difficult, getting easier?
We believe there is a broad dislocation across the wealth management industry. The 2008/09 crisis meant that large institutions needed to focus much more on their core competencies and we have therefore seen a lot of change going on within these organisations. This includes changes to jurisdictional coverage, internal practices and policies, incentive programmes, and most importantly how advice is provided to their clients. All this change can lead to confusion for both bankers and their clients. 

Our model thrives on being able to work across many of these large institutions which gives bankers greater flexibility and control over their businesses, while also benefitting clients with a greater degree of selection. Therefore, this is a very exciting time for a firm like Plurimi to grasp this opportunity and recruit talent while the dislocation continues. 

I see you have three main areas of business: investment, wealth management and structured solutions. Would you consider adding further business lines or is the current mix about right?
The heart of what we do is wealth management; we are here to reach the financial goals of our clients. Initially, a large part of our client base was active in structured products and therefore over time we have built a real value add in this space – being truly open architecture in our idea generation and pricing channels. 

Today, Plurimi’s business is much more diverse across all the asset classes. However, we have built upon our experience in structured products. In 2019, we hired Richard Baker, who is a 20-year plus veteran in the space, having spent most of his career at Morgan Stanley. 

Richard led the creation of Plurimi Structured Solutions, which focuses solely on sourcing best-in-class ideas, and then pricing them for clients in a very competitive environment. We do have some other very exciting iniatives in place, for example, Plurimi Private Asset Administrative Services, offers clients consolidation, analysis and monitoring across their private asset portfolios. To date we have assets of over $500m under this programme and we feel this could be an area with great growth potential. 

Finally, we have a real aspiration to be able to offer one of the best consolidation platforms in the market. We have been working on this for some time and hope to begin rolling it out to clients in the next few months. This will allow clients to have smarter and quicker visibility across all their portfolios and also allow the bankers to be better informed to give the best possible portfolio advice. 

How has the firm been able to maintain client/advisor connections in the pandemic and what lessons do you draw from it? Where do you think the firm can improve? How do you think the wealth industry has managed in general? For example, how can Plurimi and its peers build trust when people aren’t necessarily able to show off a nice office because everyone is working from home?
The global pandemic has been a challenging time for everyone. We were quick to implement a business continuity plan and our IT systems have allowed all of us to work effectively from home. We already had some very exciting technological roll outs underway including consolidating reporting services and improved internal reporting systems. However, the lockdown taught us that we needed a more efficient way of communicating with clients. 

We have therefore begun work on "Plurimi Connect", an application for relationship managers to communicate more effectively with their clients. The application has many exciting features including messaging, video calls and documentation sharing, all provided using market leading safeguards.