Hargreaves Lansdown

Hargreaves Lansdown is a Bristol-based investment management company first founded in 1981 by Peter Hargreaves and Stephen Lansdown, initially providing advice to clients on unit trusts and tax planning matters.

Its Vantage Service platform includes more than 2,500 funds, UK, US, Canadian and European shares, ETFs, investment trusts, bonds and gilts. A UK retail platform was launched in May 2017.

In April 2016, Legg Mason withdrew from offering Isas to investors and agreed a deal to transfer up to £65m in assets and up to 7,000 clients to the Hargreaves Lansdown Vantage platform.

Money Marketing reported in April 2017 that Hargreaves Lansdown was looking to boost its adviser numbers amid frustrations that only a few good-quality professionals are available to hire.

Hargreaves Lansdown is by far the largest player in the UK direct-to-consumer investment market. Brexit concerns did not seem to have affected its performance unduly, with assets under administration reaching £82bn in the three months to 30 September 2017, up 4 per cent since the previous quarter. In the three-month period, Hargreaves Lansdown gained 30,000 new customers, taking the number of active clients to nearly one million. The firm also saw a rise in net new business of £1.54bn over the same time frame. Revenues for the year-to-date of £104.1m were up 15 per cent on 2016 figures (£90.5m).

Hargreaves Lansdown chief executive Chris Hill said in November 2017 that the fundamentals of the firm were not going to change under his tenure: “The things we are doing now were things we were already planning to do beforehand. The things in this business area are much more about evolution so the challenge for this business is to go into that next stage of growth.”

Hill added that an active savings account would be ready by the end of 2017 and would be rolled out to selected clients first before a soft launch early in 2018. It was planned that the service would have a “relatively” simple cash management tool, to be followed by a cash Isa.

In February 2018, Hargreaves Lansdown hired former Barclays retail banking boss and fintech expert Deanna Oppenheimer as its new chair.