Trusting times for Money Managers

Money Managers is looking to give the trust industry a bit of a shake-up with the launch of its Heritage Programme.

Thursday, November 26th 1998, 12:00AM

Money Managers is looking to give the trust industry a bit of a shake-up with the launch of its Heritage Programme.
The company has established a wholly-owned subsidiary, Heritage Trustee Company, to offer a variety of basic trusts to its client base.
Heritage is headed up by Len McKeown, who has had 29 years in the trustee industry, first with the Public Trust Office and later with Trustees Executors.

It is offering clients a system of "modular" single asset trusts under the SiMPLEtrusts brand. Essentially each asset (family home, holiday house and investment portfolio) can be put into separate trusts.
Beside the trusts Heritage is offering a range of estate planning services including Memorandum of Wishes, Enduring Power of Attorney and wills.
Money Managers marketing director Alasdair Scott says there is already huge demand from clients for trusts.
He says about 5-10 per cent of Money Managers' clients already have trusts and that figure could increase to 20-30 per cent with Heritage.
The trusts have been priced competitively, and in such as way as not to stop people having more than one trust.
"We are undercutting the market quite severely," Scott says.
Besides price, there is the opportunity to provide clients with better service and trust administration than that which people are currently getting from some of the traditional providers of trusts, such as lawyers and accountants.
Scott says Money Managers is prepared to take on lawyers and accountants in the trust business as some of these people haven't exactly been complimentary about financial planning.
To start with the entire Heritage trust business will be dealt with by Money Managers' head office and over time advisers will take over operating the business and McKeown's role will shift to one of auditing the work done by advisers.
While he expects the established players won't welcome the launch of Heritage, there is "plenty of room for everyone", he says.
Also Money Managers has used some of the top brains at legal firm Rudd Watts and Stone to put the SiMPLEtrusts together.
"There's an awful lot of people with loaded guns, so we can't stuff it up," McKeown says.

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