Totus managing director and co-founder Vince De Stefano said the changes have taken place over the past year and have seen the company “move completely away from the traditional IFA model, the main focus of which usually involves gathering assets, to a holistic approach focused on servicing clients’ specific wealth management needs”.
Although the company shifted its base to Southern Spain and Gibraltar around a decade ago, it has now returned to London, where it has merged with Hopkins Consulting – an established tax specialist which had been a joint venture partner.
As this issue was going to press, De Stefano revealed that the company had also just taken on a team of advisers and their clients from another advisory business – Veritas Financial Services (Europe), giving it two more offices in Spain, as well as a foothold for the first time on the Costa Blanca.
At the same time, he said, it is about to open an outpost in Marbella, and is in the final stages of agreeing a merger with another one of its joint venture partners.
De Stefano declined to name that firm, but said it is a Barcelona-based tax specialist, reflecting his and partner and co-founder Simon Ingram’s belief that tax has become a significantly more important element in the toolkit of today’s wealth manager.
This is particularly true when that wealth manager’s clients, like those of Totus, are high-net-worth individuals who either live abroad as expatriates or across a number of different tax jurisdictions, according to De Stefano.
“I think I have yet to meet a single high net worth individual in Spain who isn’t concerned and uncertain about his tax position and residency [status],” said De Stefano, who recently relocated to London from Spain, as part of the corporate revamp.
Legal expertise also remains important, De Stefano added. Although Totus last year sold out of its joint venture with the Gibraltar-based Triay & Triay law firm, he said it continues to maintain strong links with other legal entities as part of this belief.
For more on Totus, see the intermediary profile in this month’s issue of International Adviser.
