Earlier this year, I spent time travelling across Scotland, sitting down with advice firms from town to city, office to office. What struck me then was a market shaped by heritage. I saw firms built over decades with long-standing client relationships, all exuding a quiet, grounded confidence of what good advice looks like.
More recently, I found myself in South Africa on a similar trip and having many similar conversations with advisers.
At first glance, these are two very different markets. Different regulatory environments, different economic backdrops and businesses that have taken very different paths to get where they are today.
But there’s an amusing connection that Scots rugby fans will recognise: a fair number of players in Scotland’s starting XV were born and trained in South Africa.
Different shirt. Same underlying talent. In many ways, that’s what these conversations felt like. Different markets. Same underlying questions.
Succession
Across both markets, founders are thinking more deliberately about what comes next. Many of these businesses were built by entrepreneurial advisers over the past two or three decades.
Now their attention is turning to the future. How do you bring the next generation into the profession? How do you structure equity in a way that’s fair, but doesn’t destabilise the firm? And how do you preserve the culture that made the business successful in the first place?
There are no easy answers. But there is a growing recognition that these questions can’t be left too late. Closely linked to this is the rise of consolidation.
In both Scotland and South Africa, we’re seeing the growth of consolidators and scaled advice groups. For some it represents an opportunity to access liquidity and greater operational support. Others view it more cautiously, concerned about whether independence can survive in a world that increasingly rewards scale.
Either way, scale is no longer a theoretical conversation and advice firms are having to think more clearly about structure, governance and long-term strategy.
Practice management
And while these businesses consider succession, consolidation and all the bigger questions concerning their future, practice management continues to evolve.
Many firms are moving beyond the traditional ‘lifestyle business’ model towards something more structured and professionalised.
Clear client segmentation, defined investment propositions, stronger operational processes and greater margin discipline are becoming more common features of successful firms. Advice is becoming more operationally sophisticated, which in turn raises expectations around systems, data and internal management.
None of this is about losing what makes advice valuable. It’s about building businesses that can sustain and deliver that value more consistently to more clients.
And, inevitably, technology and AI are now part of almost every conversation. There’s real excitement but a healthy scepticism too.
Advisers don’t want to fall behind. But they also don’t want to invest time and money into tools that don’t ultimately improve outcomes for clients. The challenge is not adopting technology for its own sake but understanding where it genuinely removes friction and supports the human relationship at the heart of advice.
What does an adviser do?
Another theme that came through my conversations throughout South Africa and Scotland is how misunderstood the adviser’s role still is.
Outside the profession, advice is still often reduced to investment selection. But we all know that’s not where the value lies, and the advisers I spoke to see their value far beyond it too.
They’re helping clients navigate complex life decisions: retirement, inheritance planning, business sales and family transitions. They’re also managing the behavioural side of advice, the long-term planning and offering reassurance when markets are volatile. These smaller, sometimes less tangible or measurable actions often matter far more than the underlying portfolio.
This leads me to a final similarity. In both countries, advisers spoke about the need for better support from the wider industry.
Not simply more products or marketing materials, but practical support that helps advice firms run better businesses – whether that’s technology, operational insight or data.
The ask is simple, but not easy: help advisers spend more time with clients, and less time dealing with everything else.
Despite these similarities, South African advisers retain a distinctive identity. The environment demands resilience and pragmatism, and that shapes how firms operate. Conversations often feel more entrepreneurial, more commercially direct.
The profession itself does appear to be converging. Markets may differ in their history and structure, but the evolution of advice is moving along similar lines everywhere.
Different accents, but increasingly the same questions about how advice firms build their futures.
Mark Sanderson is managing director – UK & international at Morningstar Wealth
