Pippa Russell, founder of financial services PR and marketing business Russell Communications, explains what makes her award-winning business tick.

How would you describe your business and what it does?

Russell Communications is a specialist financial services PR and marketing business based in Bath. We offer targeted and proactive communication solutions in this space, driven by our experience and vision. We help our clients tell their stories with full-service marketing and PR, delivered with passion and energy. Russell Communications launched in 2021 against the challenging backdrop of the pandemic, but the business managed to triple its client base and double its workforce and its profits in its first full year. I’m incredibly proud of our progress so far.

What plans do you have for growing your business over the coming year?

We are great at traditional journalist outreach and relationship-building, with particularly strong relationships on trade publications. But media and publishing are evolving rapidly. As the communication landscape shifts, Russell Communications has been adapting, branching out into native content creation, multi-media, and podcast production. We are getting lots of new requests for business proposals so we think this will be a growth area for us as we meet our clients’ changing needs. As Russell Communications grows, we’re also hoping to expand our headcount, hiring home-grown talent from the area near our offices in Bath. Our vision is to become the number one PR and marketing agency within the financial services sector.

What trends have you seen over the past year?

As the ‘Magnificent Seven’ technology stocks in the US have powered the performance of many internationally diversified portfolios, there is continued interest and growth in US markets. We have also noticed increasing interest in esoteric and alternative investments, and we expect this to continue into 2025 and beyond.

Where do you see the institutional investment industry going over the coming year?

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has been a game-changer for many industries, and financial services has been grappling with how best to realise its huge potential while maintaining regulatory compliance. The themes of digitalisation, data and particularly data quality also remain important in the institutional investment industry.

How will your firm be able to support them?

We can help firms position themselves as authorities in their field, producing thought leadership content which explores some of these big issues we know investors are thinking about. My 25 years’ experience and strong contacts in this space give us unique insight into what our clients are looking for and Russell Communications aims to anticipate and meet their needs.

Why do you think you won this award?

In the highly regulated world of financial services, it can be difficult for businesses to get their message across. This is where Russell Communications excels. What sets us apart is our deep understanding of our market, great relationships with journalists and our targeted and proactive communications. Our client work has been very well received this year and we have had a lot of interest from new clients in our space, largely based on referrals and recommendations. Financial services is a surprisingly small world! 

Please click here to return to the report

Henry Cobbe, Head of Research at Elston Consulting, explains the firm’s winning ways in the 2024 IAM service provider awards.

What is the size and scale of your business at the moment?

We consult to adviser firms which have approximately GBP6 billion of assets under advice. Of this approximately GBP1.3 billion is in ready-made or adviser-defined custom solutions managed by Elston Portfolio Management.

Additionally we provide consultancy or benchmarking services for approximately GBP300 million of funds. Our head office is in London, but our client base covers the whole of the UK. Our core business is supporting UK financial advisers and their investment committees, whether that’s helping to develop a robust advice process, reviewing their Centralised Investment and Retirement Proposition, or offering adviser defined custom MPS service or using ready-made solutions from Elston Portfolio Management.

We were founded in 2012 and worked exclusively with providers until 2020 designing solutions for the adviser market. From 2020 we have started working directly with advisers to help them insource investment capabilities, and things have mushroomed since then. We are fast-growing both in terms of our client base, assets under consultancy and our own team.

What trends have you seen over the past year?

We see a structural shift in the adviser market.

In addition to growth of assets on platforms, there is a pronounced shift to discretionary MPS.

The first wave of this has been to off-the-shelf solutions from DFMs. But for firms that still want involvement and say in how their portfolios are run, we see “Custom MPS” as being a growth area. Directly or indirectly, we have been helping advisers with Custom MPS since 2018 following the introduction of PROD rules. On our estimates, Elston is the largest Custom MPS provider by AUM with GBP1.1 billion in Custom adviser-defined mandates, which is substantially more than some household name DFMs for whom Custom MPS is a new thing. Custom MPS is what we pioneered, and we aim to stay ahead in that space.

What plans do you have for growing your business over the coming year?

First and foremost we endeavour to offer exceptional service to all our current adviser clients. This is what our clients value most: to be a genuine investment partner that is not only delivering on existing solutions, but innovating with new solutions. When you are confident that you have a modus operandi that works for them and delivers results, not only does that give us the confidence, but also the credibility to win new business. Staying ahead of market developments, as well as robust investment process aiming to deliver relative outperformance – all of this matters. The regulatory burden on financial advisers is considerable and growing. We ensure that we are always up to date with regulatory changes and developments and tailor our solutions accordingly. For example – we launched our Retirement Portfolios back in 2021 in anticipation of the Thematic Review on Retirement Income, so these purpose-built decumulation portfolios will have their four year anniversary in March.

Where do you see the institutional investment industry going over the coming year?

We have institutional capabilities but our clients are retail financial advisers. We see the biggest challenge for fund houses being to decide whether they are commoditised component providers or value-add solution providers. We first articulated this strategic choice in 2012 in an article for CFA Magazine. It remains as relevant today.

How will your firm be able to support them?

Our aim is to help UK advisers deliver robust, disciplined, institutional quality investment solutions for their clients. We aim to provide a comprehensive investment engine to help them do just that.

Please click here to return to the report

Standing in for IAM editor, Gill Wadsworth, Beverly Chandler, managing editor of Chandler Publishing, said that the asset management industry had faced a number of headwinds over 2023, and described the service providers supporting institutional investors as the backbone of the industry, holding the whole thing together.

In a week the Institutional Asset Manager Awards 2023 report will be released, with interviews from some of our winners and pictures from the awards’ event. Many congratulations to all our winners.

The winners in the 2023 Institutional Asset Manager Service Provider Awards, 2023 are: