The Silent Partners

Derek Stewart

Derek Stewart Derek lives outside Glasgow with his wife and three children.

He started in the financial services industry working for a large provider but since 1981 he has worked in the IFA sector. Before setting up The Silent Partner in February 1998, Derek was the Regional Director of Sedgwick Noble Lowndes responsible for Individual Financial Advice and Corporate Benefit Services in Scotland & Northern Ireland.

Derek is also Managing Director of Strategic Asset Managers Ltd, a regional based IFA in Glasgow. Their clients are mainly high net worth individuals who are all introduced through accountants, lawyers, private client fund managers and private banks. He divides his time between the two businesses and he is Dip PFS qualified.

Derek is invited to speak at many conferences including PIMS, Personal Finance Society, Institute of Financial Planners and New Model Adviser.

Tom Williams

Tom Williams Tom is married with three children and resides in Bristol.

He joined the financial services industry in 1978. Since then he has served on the boards of Noble Lowndes and Sedgwick Noble Lowndes and in the late 1990’s became a European Partner with WM Mercer, where he obtained extensive experience of delivering and managing both financial services and employee benefits businesses.

Tom holds an Advanced Professional Diploma in Strategic Management. He has jointly run The Silent Partner since January 2000, and also holds Non Executive Director positions with other organisations.

His clients include a number of the UK’s top ten product providers, financial advisory firms and software suppliers. Assignments include strategic and tactical delivery in most business areas with particular focus on sales and marketing initiatives, performance management and business restructuring.

More recently this has included the creation of a business planning toolkit to assist smaller advisory firms in making their transition into the new model advisor world and working with dragon-style investments and start-ups where his NED experience is proving invaluable.

Mik Cons

Mik lives near Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire with his wife and three children.

Mik started in financial services in 1984 working for an investment IFA in Kingston, Surrey. Here he learnt about both financial services and IT as he developed the IFA’s administration system. Three years later Mik joined LSD Software to develop their Life and Pensions System which became the market leading DOS based IFA back office system.

In 1996 Mik co-founded 1st Software with Rory Curran and Jon Buxton, initially developing the system and helping market, sell, support and maintain the UK’s most successful IFA Client management application yet produced.

He became MD in 2004 during which time 1st grew by over 250% to 130 people with revenues of £15m and EBIT £5.2m in 2007. During that time, 1st clients’ ranged from small to large IFAs, Employee Benefit Consultancies, Private Banks, Providers and Platforms and in Mik’s last year 1st had 52 of the Top 100 Adviser firms as clients, 40% of the overall UK market with over 13,500 concurrent users across 1,400 firms.

Having sold 1st to Vertex and completed a smooth transition into new ownership during a 2-year earn-out period, Mik brings to The Silent Partner a unique combination of Adviser, IT and Business skills.

Most of Mik’s work is with dragon-style investments, which require practical attention to detail but he also specialises in wrap platforms and investment solutions.

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