Quilter has announced it will discontinue the Caerus Managed Portfolio Service in October next year (2025), Money Marketing can reveal.
The Caerus portfolios are a legacy discretionary MPS that was acquired by Quilter Financial Planning in 2017.
The portfolios are available on the Parmenion, Nucleus and Aegon platforms, but as Quilter explained “are not actively marketed and thus are now steadily declining”.
In order for financial advisers to have time to make arrangements for their clients, Quilter has provided them with 12 months’ notice of the closure.
Quilter said: “This is to ensure advisers have the chance to go through the annual review cycle with their clients and recommend alternative solutions as part of the regular review, rather than trigger the need for any ad hoc reviews, which may result in additional advice charges for customers.”
As Quilter WealthSelect MPS is now available on third-party platforms, it will assist advisers in “mapping the Caerus portfolios to the most closely fitting WealthSelect portfolio where applicable”.
This will help advisers and their clients in selecting a suitable alternative.
WealthSelect is now available on Parmenion, where the vast majority of Caerus assets are, as well as M&G, Morningstar and Fidelity.
Quilter is assessing further platforms to add the service to. Previously, WealthSelect was only available on Quilter’s platform.
WealthSelect is a similar MPS offering as Caerus, using the same investment process and investments team as the Caerus portfolios.
However, Quilter said WealthSelect has various advantages such as access to a wider range of literature and reporting, and also lower costs.
Due to this, Quilter is “recommending advisers invested in the Caerus MPS to switch to the WealthSelect MPS”.
Quilter lead investment director Andy Miller said: “We have undertaken a thorough review of the Caerus MPS and, due to its legacy nature and the increased availability of WealthSelect to advisers, we have taken the decision to discontinue to service.
“We want to support advisers and their clients through this process, so have given them a long notice period where we will continue to operate the portfolios to the same high standard that we do today.
“We do believe, however, that these clients would be better suited to being invested in WealthSelect, where the same investment process is followed by the same portfolio managers but with enhanced benefits.
“WealthSelect has grown to be one of the most comprehensive managed portfolio services in the market, and with its availability now widened to third party platforms, we are excited to work with a greater cohort of advisers and promote the benefits the portfolios can bring to their business and clients.”
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