Hewison Private Wealth soon-to-depart managing director Andrew Hewison has assured staff and clients there will be no changes to the business as it takes on external investment from Pemba Capital Partners.
“In fact, there’ll be greater opportunities in the future for our advisers to become owners and shareholders in the business. And some of our smaller shareholders are actually increasing their ownership in the business along with Pemba,” Hewison tells Professional Planner.
He first shared his decision to leave the firm with major shareholders and board members in 2024, to ensure the business had ample time to make a succession plan.
He explains that he felt “like the time was right for me to step aside, introduce a fresh voice, fresh enthusiasm, fresh ideas into the business to take it to the next phase. But ultimately, it remains a continuation of our current strategy”.
Hewison says he will step away from all operational involvement and act as a non-executive director. A search for his replacement is currently underway.
One of the main questions clients have been asking after Hewison announced he will be stepping down from the business at the end of 2026 is “is my adviser leaving?”, and the answer is no, according to him.
Pemba has a non-operational stake in the firm and will take board seats for strategic reasons, but it doesn’t want to upset a successful business, according to Hewison.
In its official statement, the private equity firm said that Pemba and the existing Hewison shareholders will broaden ownership of the business to a wider group of Hewison’s advisers, while retaining the team central to client relationships and securing the firm’s long-term continuity.
It added that it will support the firm to deepen its adviser bench, broaden its service offering, and selectively consider potential M&A opportunities.
Pemba did not disclose details of the deal, but Professional Planner understands it is between $75 million and $100 million, as reported by the Australian Financial Review.
Pemba’s interest in private wealth
Pemba Capital Partners had been looking at the wealth industry for quite some time and the micro drivers and tailwinds within the advice industry are powerful, Mark Bryan, one of Pemba’s managing directors tells Professional Planner.
“They would include, of course, intergenerational wealth transfer, the continual thrust of superannuation investment.”
With Australia’s superannuation funds projected to be the second largest in the world by 2031, there is a big opportunity in the space.
“And over the last decade, there’s been a general reduction in the number of advisers. So, there’s a shortage of advisers and overall, we see the macro tailwinds is very strong,” Bryan says.
HPW is a high-quality business, according to Bryan, and “its model had been always a client-first model, whereby no commissions are taken, all incentive fees are passed back to the customer”.
“It’s very much independent financial advice. They have grown the business impressively and steadily over a period of time, and we felt that it had a very good and strong brand in the market.”
Hewison is Pemba’s first foray into private wealth, but the private equity firm has an understanding of the industry having invested in SMSF software company SuperConcepts in 2023.
Why Pemba Capital Partners
For 40 years, HPW was owned entirely by those working in the business. Reasons for choosing Pemba include its non-operational interest, its ability to invest in technology, training and professional development, and because it “believed in our current client offering and philosophy and didn’t have an interest in changing who we are and what we do. So far there’s been no criticism from our clients,” Hewison says.
Ultimately, Pemba was willing to assist HPW to continue executing its strategy while “investing in a business with a very successful track record”.
Hewison says that this is different from private equity takeovers where “you become one of many”, and more like a one-to-one partnership. It is also not a case of a troubled business that requires a full restructure.
“Their ownership in us is included into one of their institutional grade funds, and they’re investing in a successful business with a long-standing track record, and they just want to be a part of that continued success into the future.”
Established in 1985 by John Hewison, Andrew’s father, the private wealth business lived through the 1987 stock crash and the 2008 global financial crisis, never accepting commissions and instead opting for a transparent fee-for-service model backed by a team of approximately 70 people and managing almost $3 billion in funds.
Andrew Hewison says he was never pressured to join the business, it was his own decision after leaving university in 2002, and he immediately felt at home. When his father decided to retire from the business, he took over it and has been managing director since 2015.
“My true passion has always been the client servicing and client experience aspect of it, and just to see the change and impact that a financial adviser can have in the lives of clients,” Hewison says.
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