John Kerr

“There is a huge advice gap in the UK, and human beings are still going to play a part in filling that gap, as is AI.”

Over 15 years at St. James's Place, John Kerr recruited more than 150 advice professionals to launch their own businesses in partnership with the firm. By John's account, those businesses were managing about 8 billion pounds of assets by 2021. Today, as Recruitment and Establishment Director at Quilter Financial Planning, John brings the same craft to building the FTSE 250 wealth manager's own network of advice firms.

The through line in John's career is unusual for a recruiter: it started on the other side of the desk. Before headhunting a single financial planner, John had worked in advice, earning qualifications and learning the business from the inside. That grounding shapes how John sees the job: recruitment is less about filling roles and more about helping people build something of their own.

Learning the Business From the Inside

John entered financial services in 1999, after hearing again and again that the sector was where the money was. There was no degree to prepare for it. As John points out, nobody studies at university to become a financial planner, let alone a recruitment director for financial advisers. The education happened on the job, at a small independent financial advisory firm where John spent about five years and earned the Financial Planning Certificate qualifications, then structured in three parts. UK financial planning qualifications have since broadened, but that early training gave John fluency in the work advisers actually do.

The firm was led by Paul, who began as John's boss and became a friend and mentor. Paul was inspirational and deeply entrepreneurial, and John still points to him as the person who opened the door to the industry. "He was my launchpad into the industry," John says.

Around 2004, John saw a chance to pair that planning expertise with a new discipline. A friend was running a recruitment business, and John joined to bring a financial services specialism, approaching firms in the sector about headhunting top talent on their behalf. The move worked. Through the end of 2006, John built a successful track record, and the rare combination of advisory experience and recruiting skill caught the attention of St. James's Place, which headhunted John to become a recruiter inside the business.

Fifteen Years Building Businesses at St. James's Place

St. James's Place, by John's account the UK's largest wealth management business with about 250 billion pounds of assets under management, gave John a platform at scale. For 15 years John recruited advice professionals and financial planning managers. Some were launching a business for the first time. Others already owned firms and chose to align them with SJP.

The leadership there left a mark. John describes David Bellamy, then the group's chief executive, as a great CEO and one of the figureheads of the business during John's tenure. Roger, John's first boss at the firm, was a good leader and a good manager.

Yet when John reflects on that period, the emphasis falls less on who managed the work than on what the work achieved. "It was what I did in that business to positively change people's lives," John says. Many of the professionals John recruited remain at SJP today, and some have become friends. The assets their businesses built up were a success for the advisers themselves as much as for the firm.

In 2021 John moved on. Fourteen of the 15 years had been, in John's words, amazing, but the model had changed, and John chose a new chapter.

Growing Quilter's Own Distribution

John joined Quilter Financial Planning in January 2022 and will mark five years with the business this January. As Recruitment and Establishment Director, John leads both the recruitment team and the establishment team, with a mandate to grow Quilter's own distribution: financial advisory firms of its own that advise on Quilter's products and services.

The role draws directly on everything that came before. Recruiting advisers is one discipline. Establishing the businesses they will run is another, and John's background spans both. Years inside a small advisory firm, a stint headhunting across the sector and a long record of partnering with professionals as they launched their own practices mean the role draws on firsthand experience of each stage.

A Clear-Eyed View of AI

John sees artificial intelligence as a technology that has been around for years but has become a genuine game changer over roughly the last 18 months to two years. At Quilter the shift is visible from the top. AI sits on the group chief executive's agenda every day, week and month, and the business is educating employees and advisers to use it. John uses the tools too, more often personally than professionally, with ChatGPT the current go-to, and readily acknowledges room to use AI more at work.

John holds two ideas at once. AI will not replace human beings, far from it, but it is already changing how people interact, adding human-to-AI collaboration and communication to the human-to-human kind. At the same time, John is candid that jobs will be lost, pointing to recent headlines from Barclays and HSBC about roles cut or put at risk because of AI. The fear many people feel is, in John's view, probably justified. Still, the overall verdict is optimistic. AI, John says, is going to change the world, reshaping how people function, work and live.

Advice for Talent Leaders in 2027

Looking to 2027, John sees an industry in a period of evolution and a challenge worth welcoming. The UK faces a huge advice gap, and John is convinced that human beings will still play a part in filling it, as will AI.

For leaders recruiting advisers and planners, John flags a specific shift. Private equity, particularly from the United States, is moving into UK wealth management to build and grow distribution, and it is leading with technology rather than money. The questions candidates ask are changing accordingly. Instead of focusing first on the financial package, advisers increasingly want to know what a firm's AI is, what its technology offers and how it will make life easier for them as advisers, business owners or employees.

The implication for talent leaders is direct: a firm's technology story is becoming part of its recruiting pitch. John expects AI to become even more prominent in 2027 and is realistic that further sacrifices for staff may come with it.