Welcome back to the C-Suite – a once a month interview where we talk to senior figures in the online trading industry.
This time we’re talking to Gareth Hazelden, Director and Founding Partner at Atlantic Capital Markets. Gareth set up the company almost a decade ago with his business partner John Woolfitt.
Atlantic Capital Markets is unique in being one of the only UK-regulated introducing brokers, with advisory permissions for CFDs. The company is also the only broker I’m aware of that has its HQ in Cornwall.
A lot of readers will be familiar with you and Atlantic Capital Markets but can you give you some background on yourself and how you ended up starting the company?
I first met my Co-Founder John Woolfitt at GE in 2003 and went on to work with him at a broker acquired by GAIN Capital, which is now StoneX.
Starting at that time really helped us build the knowledge and foundation needed to run a company in the financial markets for the long-haul, and guiding clients through the global financial crisis provided experience that we haven’t had since.
John and I wanted to do something on our own, not just be small fish in a big corporate pond, which is why we started Atlantic Capital Markets.
We had coverage of both sides of the business, with myself as a Senior Sales Manager and John as Head Trader. We had a great learning curve in the industry and both recognised that strong long term relationships are the key to success!
The market in the UK seems to be trending towards big players with big marketing budgets. How does Atlantic Capital Markets attract clients as an IB in that sort of hyper competitive market?
We are very fortunate to have built up a strong following of investors with a database of over 77k active investors over the years.
Market trends may point towards big players with big budgets but that has left a gaping hole in the industry for the personal approach that the big players simply can’t provide anymore. With Atlantic you are an actual person not just an account number.
We keep our base engaged by providing them with free reports on markets, stocks or how current scenarios could impact your portfolio and what to look out for.
We also don’t go for the quick grab, timing for markets and potential clients can be critical, so fostering the relationship long before accounts are open and keeping them engaged until a time they are ready to invest with us plays a key part.
As you alluded to, something I hear occasionally is that bigger players, because of client volumes, find it hard to provide a more ‘white glove’ service to clients. Do you think that works in your favour and does that mean you attract those higher value clients?
I’ve just deposited my ISA allowance with one of these newer brokers as I receive interest on my unused funds. I trickle the funds into the market over the year.
I fit pro status on my application. Has anyone called me or have I had anything tailored to me? Nothing. I learnt many moons ago that you make 80% of your money from 20% of your clients so you really have to look after the 20%, particularly today with client acquisition costs being so high.
With Atlantic you are not just a number and we have a great team that can provide a personal service to each client. This is an area of service that simply can’t be replicated by the bigger players. The key for all of our clients is that they know if something is happening in the markets, and they are unsure of the whys or the hows, they can simply pick up the phone and get the details!
What are high value clients in the UK are looking for from their provider?
Good advice, help with trading discipline, and service. When you go to a Michelin star restaurant you don’t want to order your food at the bar.
Successful people are busy, so they just want that extra level of service. With the tech revolution we have seen over the last ten years there are multiple ways to communicate with your high net worth clients. We have always found there is very little substitute for having a person on the end of the line.
Atlantic Capital Markets has been going now for about a decade and you’ve been in the industry for almost 20 years. Do you and John Woolfitt still have clients from when you started the firm? Perhaps even from before then when you were at StoneX? If so, what would you say is the key to making those sort of relationships long-lasting, particularly as this tends to be a high churn business?
At the very core of our business is the three R’s as we like to call it! Relationship, regulation and reputation. Inevitably there will be some clients that come and go but we have plenty of clients that have been with us for the duration, and a few clients that followed us from our previous brokers.
The key to this retention is offering good value for money and a variation of services as well as not limiting ourselves to helping clients solely on what they do with us. This has seen clients migrate share accounts to us, so whether they are trading or not for a particular period we still keep the relationship warm by helping with longer term investments.
One of the unique things about Atlantic Capital Markets is that you are based in Cornwall. Has that been a problem for you, in terms of attracting clients? Or do you think it’s benefited you in any way to have a presence in the south west and outside of London?
When I first started out, there was a bit of backlash from some of the London brokers, who were saying ‘why would you want to do business outside of the city?’
However, it has turned out to be beneficial for us in the long run. Modern technology has removed any “potential edge” a London broker may feel they have and in the city there are a lot of temptations and distractions.
There is also a lot of movement from firm to firm in the city so retention of staff is difficult. Here there are not as many competing opportunities and so we have built up a culture that not only supports client retention but also staff retention.
Clients have never had a problem with us being based outside of London and with the cost of living, our staff’s money goes a lot further. We also don’t get stuck on the tube – just the odd tractor now again. Overall it’s a better quality of life. We get city wages in the country, with beautiful beaches, good schools and low crime
Obviously being an IB means working with partner brokers. What has that been like in the UK? What sorts of things make for a good relationship and what do you need, at your end as an IB, to make it a fruitful relationship?
We have great relationships with our platform providers and we work with the most established biggest and the best in the world.
They have all the backend systems that allow us to trade for our clients, they know we do everything correctly and have good policies, systems and controls.
We get approached all the time from smaller companies and we have had extensive conversations with them and trialled some in the early days but they are not geared up for the high end service we provide to clients.
You’ve been spending more time in Dubai and are working on setting up an entity there. What’s the thinking behind that and has that been in response to demand or because you think the opportunity is there?
I came to Dubai for the expo in January and when I came back to the UK, I said to John ‘we need to do something in the Middle East.’
We are setting up a new entity there because there is so much hunger for trading – all the big money is moving to Dubai from the UK and EU. Bear in mind over 10k millionaires have left the UK in the last 12 months.
We have shown that a relationship-based service works in the UK and feel our unique offering is a perfect fit for the Middle Eastern markets. We are in the process of getting regulated and have a strong compliance team in place, future staff members lined up, and a solid business plan to work on, so it’s very exciting for us. I’ll be based in Dubai and John will still be in the UK.
You’ve been running Atlantic Capital Markets now for almost a decade. What’s the long-term vision for the company?
We are really proud of what we have built up with Atlantic – it’s a great business. Qualified derivative advisors are few and far between, although there are actually a lot of them down here in Cornwall. We have a good experienced team of staff, we have a great database of high net worths and big value clients.
We would like to improve on the tech side. Lots of the new wave of market makers have skills in this area that we are still learning but then high net worths require our type of service, which those companies don’t have.
The internet and AI can help you with trading ideas but it can’t help with human emotion. Traders will still revenge trade, move their stops, run their losses and cut their winners. So educating individuals on how to trade in the markets is as critical as actually trading itself. Again building a long term relationship is the way to do that and that’s something we excel at
