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Penny Lovell steps down as Sanlam Private Wealth CEO

Penny Lovell steps down as Sanlam Private Wealth CEO

Sanlam has confirmed that Penny Lovell, chief executive officer of Sanlam Private Wealth, has stepped down from the role and is leaving the firm.

Oaktree already owns IFA consolidator Ascot Lloyd but the two businesses were said to continue to operate independently.

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Lovell joined Sanlam's executive committee in 2017 after spending five years at Close Brothers Asset Management as head of private client service.

Prior to that, she was managing director at Rothschild Wealth Management. She has also held senior positions at Fleming Family & Partners and Coutts. 

Following her departure from Sanlam, the new executive committee will be led by Jonathan Polin, current chief executive of Sanlam UK, who was appointed to the role last year after John White left.

Haig Bathgate will join as head of investments, while Niral Parekh will take on the role of chief operating officer and Christopher Kraft will be chief commercial officer. Nicola Fraser will remain as chief financial officer.

Bathgate joins from 7IM, where he was head of portfolio management, a role he left in early 2021. Prior to 7IM he worked for TCAM, the Edinburgh-based DFM business.

Parekh was previously head of retail asset and wealth management at Capco and head of product proposition and director of corporate strategy at Tilney Group. 

Parekh was also financial services manager in the asset and wealth management division at Ernst & Young.

Before joining Sanlam, Kraft was COO at True Potential and prior to that spent almost a decade at Perella Weinberg Partners, latterly as executive director.

The new roles will officially start once change in control has been confirmed by the regulator in early-April. 

Sanlam said they will be supported by a senior management team with specialisms across the different business areas.

Polin said: “We are excited to announce this strong and decisive new exco as we set our ambitions, under new ownership, to take our business far beyond the traditional wealth management model and provide clients with a new suite of digital tools. 

“This will enable our clients to have unsurpassed look-through capability into their individual financial universe while maintaining the personal service they have come to expect. We have put in place a team of specialist senior business managers to support the exco and to communicate more directly with the wider business, driving greater dynamism and empowerment of our staff to give clients the best service available anywhere.”

Sanlam said it aims to be the “first truly digitally-enabled, hybrid wealth business” in the UK and has a new digital platform to achieve this.

The company said it will give clients their own financial ecosystem, where they can see all their financial information in one place, from banking and credit cards to investments. 

They will be able to select how they interact with the company, whether digitally, face-to-face or a hybrid of the two, maintaining the full personalisation of their service with the ongoing visibility and transparency provided by a completely new digital platform.