Agency & Novation Associate

We are looking for an Agency & Novation Associate to establish a new function within the Saltus Platform and take the reins on our agency management and novation activities.

You’ll be working with the Saltus Platform, focused on establishing and managing the agencies we have with external providers and coordinating the novation of client accounts from their ceding agent to Saltus.

This role spans the breadth of the Saltus group and will provide opportunity to work with a multitude of other departments. Two of the key stakeholders for this role will be our Replatforming team who work on the extensive M&A activities Saltus execute every year and our latest proposition, the Saltus Partnership Programme (SPP), providing exposure to a variety of critical strategic projects.

A role that has been in addition to other team’s day to day responsibilities for a number of years now, this is an opportunity to establish and refine the process to Saltus’ agency management to ensure the business, the advisers we work with and fundamentally the underlying investor’s journey is seamless.

Why Saltus?

Our mission is to improve everyone’s relationship with their wealth: to make it a positive force for their future and at the same time to prevent it being a source of anxiety. We want everyone who works at Saltus to be proud to work here, and to find fulfilment and meaning in the work that they do.

We are a successful, privately owned, LLP, with a number of offices in the South of England including London, Whiteley and Farnham. We are incredibly proud of our culture and work really hard to ensure that Saltus is a great place to work for our people, where they can have fun and grow in their career, with a passion for excellence and customer service.

We’re proud that we’ve been recognized as a winner by the Sunday Times in the Best Places to Work 2024 awards, as well as a winner in the Professional Adviser awards 2024 for the Best Financial Advisers to Work For. These accolades reflect our commitment to creating an exceptional work environment and our dedication to excellence in the financial industry. Join our award-winning team and be a part of our continued success!

Saltus is an independently owned financial planning and discretionary investment management house. We are dedicated to providing a high-quality service for private clients, trusts, and smaller institutions.

Saltus Partners was founded in 2004 and has grown organically and through a small number of carefully integrated acquisitions. Originally the business started out as an investment manager and has now developed the financial planning side of the offering, putting this at the forefront of the client relationship.

Today Saltus manages and advises on over £4.5 billion of client assets and is headquartered in Fareham, Hampshire.

Can you tell me more about the role?

As a newly formed function, this role has the opportunity to be personalised over time. At its core, we are looking for someone with great initiative to get under the bonnet of the process in setting up new or managing existing agency arrangements with third party providers and manage the novation of clients from their ceding agent to the Saltus agency. As a business seeking to take advantage of unprecedented consolidation in the wealth management industry currently, we are engaged in multiple acquisitions of other financial planning firms every year. Our model is to vertically integrate acquired business so naturally this requires extensive replatforming work with agency and novation management a core element. Additionally, we work with external financial advisers whose model requires agencies to be established and maintained to support their panel of providers. Anchoring the multitude of agency relationships Saltus has is the Finance team who ensure income due is received, reconciled and paid away to the correct destination. This role will work closely with that team to seek to find ways to streamline and build resilience into those processes to ensure a reliable flow of data and income from end to end.

Therefore, you’ll have a wide range of responsibilities, including the following:

• Establishing new agency relationships with third party providers, working with internal teams to ensure appropriate due diligence and account management structures are in place
• Managing existing agency relationships, ensuring any ongoing due diligence requirements are met
• Managing any changes in our relationships e.g. advisers retiring and taking the appropriate action
• Working with newly acquired businesses to understand their agency arrangements and devising a plan to support in their integration with Saltus
• Working with the M&A teams, SPP team and Saltus Financial Planning teams to ensure any novation activities are managed through to completion with the adviser and client journey at the core.
• Working with the group Finance team to explore opportunities to improve the income reconciliation process.
• Actively seeking ways of improving quality and efficiencies in processes to support the various stakeholders.

What skills and experience do I need to have?

We think that the best candidate for this role will be:

• A minimum of 5 years’ experience in financial services, platform servicing or financial planning services would be advantageous
• Experience of working with third party providers
• Experience managing income flow from third party providers and reconciliation would be advantageous
• An excellent communicator who can work well both independently and as part of a team
• Someone with intellectual horsepower and curiosity for solving business problems
• Someone with a ‘growth mindset’, i.e. an appetite for testing yourself and using past mistakes as a springboard to keep improving
• A technology native with excellent application of initiative to use tech’ to support in day-to-day tasks more effectively
• Organised, with good time management skills and the ability to prioritise tasks and work to multiple deadlines, often autonomously
• An influencer with the ability to work with business stakeholders at all organisational levels
• An individual with the ability to form successful professional relationships, both internally and externally

Where will I be working?

We’re incredibly flexible about where, when and how you work: we don’t want anyone to be prevented from coming to work for Saltus as a result of the working pattern that they’re looking for. Ideally, you’d be able to be based out of our Whiteley or London office for two days each week, working the remainder of the week from home. Alternatively, you might work part of your working week from one of our other offices. We are passionate about championing flexible working for our people, so if there’s a slightly different working pattern that you’re looking for, then please come and have a chat to us about it!

What benefits do I get when working for Saltus?

You’ll get a salary of between £40,000 – £50,000pa dependent on experience, alongside 25 days’ holiday (plus bank holidays), study assistance, life assurance, income protection and a pension, alongside access to our flexible benefits platform. Just as importantly, you’ll get to experience our culture, which we really do live and breathe, ensuring that Saltus is a fantastic place to work for every single one of our 200 people. We work hard, but we have an awful lot of fun along the way. If you think you’d like to come and join us, then please do get in touch… we’d love to hear from you!