uncertain about his tax position and residency.”
Unified business
Although Hopkins Consulting had functioned “perfectly well” as a joint venture tax consultant for Totus, “it has always been my intention to bring our joint ventures into mergers [eventually], where possible,” De Stefano says, explaining the thinking that led to last year’s merger.
“Because it is my view that if you are formally joined at the hip, you get more in the way of cross-referring and upselling of business to the client base.”
That Totus and Hopkins formalised their union in April by taking new offices together here in Farringdon has added to the synergy, according to De Stefano, even though both businesses had offices within walking distance of each other in the same general neighbourhood – Clerkenwell – for the past decade.
As this issue of International Adviser was going to press, Totus revealed that it had just taken on a team of advisers and their clients from another advisory business – Veritas Financial Services (Europe), which gave it two more offices in Spain, and in the process, a first 
foothold on the Costa Blanca.
At the same time, it is about to open a new Costa Del Sol office in Marbella, and is in the final stages of agreeing a merger with another one of its joint venture partners.
De Stefano declines to name that firm, but says it is a Barcelona-based Spanish tax specialist.
“For now, we have enough on our plate, but if I had to guess where we might see the next Totus office, it would probably be Germany, where we have very strong connections, again through the tax area, with a firm in Munich,” De Stefano adds.
“Right now we are looking for a German-speaking IFA for our Spain operation, as there is a big German community down there.”
Longer term, Ingram and De Stefano are looking at Brazil and India, where, recent exploratory trips have shown, there are pockets of HNWIs not unlike those along the coast of Spain, but thus far rather less well-served by advisory firms such as Totus.
“I would not say Europe has had its day, but it is certainly a very mature market at the moment,” De Stefano says, adding that some of the best opportunities to be had there now lie in picking off the best of the advisers and clients of those rival advisory firms that have recently “gone to the wall”.
Early days
Like most entrepreneurs, Ingram and De Stefano started small. The company now known as Totus dates back to 1987, when they founded what they then called 20Twenty Independent Ltd.
20Twenty began life as the independent financial services arm of US-based Lincoln Financial Group’s UK life and pensions distribution business.
“Eventually we had our own mortgage business, and a healthcare business that became what is now Health-on-Line, owned by Axa,” says De Stefano, who had been the company’s managing director.
Ten years into this venture, De Stefano recalls, he and Ingram became increasingly restless, but at first, struggled to find the “door” into the higher net worth end of the market that they yearned to move into.
Search for quality
Ingram’s move to Sotogrande provided an answer, as he quickly found, De Stefano says, that a lot of wealthy expatriates there reported having had “horrendous experiences” with the extremely poor quality financial advice they typically found on offer.
“When you start looking deeper, at the service levels that they receive out there, for the prices they pay, you understand why there are a lot of dissatisfied HNWI clients on the Costa del Sol.”
It is impossible to talk about Spain for long without mentioning that country’s recent financial difficulties, and De Stefano says he has seen them firsthand.
But for a still-standing business like Totus, the churn caused by the downturn is resulting in both clients and advisers turning up on Totus’s Spanish and Gibraltar doorsteps, rather than just an exodus of clients – the richest of whom are tending to stay put anyway, according to De Stefano.
“We can help the clients who are exiting Spain, and need help with their tax affairs as they do, and help them on this end when they arrive back.
“As for the advisers, we may be in a position to offer them a role within the group.”
