Richard Rowney is taking his mission to make Nucleus the challenger brand for the platform industry seriously.
Since becoming chief executive of the business after the integration with James Hay, Rowney said he was intrigued by his reputation as a 'change manager'.
He told FT Adviser: "I've only worked for three companies in my career - and this is my third one. I tend to stay around and eat my own cooking.
"Yes, I love to develop strategies for building and improving businesses but I do not just come in, change things, and then leave. I'm not going anywhere soon. I love what I do and I love Nucleus.
"You have to have a passion for building a brand. It's long hours and hard and it can be downright unsociable at times. But I love what I do.
"I like feeling that I can make a difference and that we are doing some really interesting things with Nucleus that will make advisers and the platform industry go 'Wow'.
"That is the legacy I want to leave."
Rowney, whose company has just started the integration post-purchase of Curtis Banks, pointed to his previous role at LV. Originally joining as managing director, life and pensions, he took over as CEO before leaving in 2019 after 13 years with the mutual.
He said: "We took a good, small business in Liverpool Victoria and turned it into the household brand, LV. We went from 1,000 staff to 6,000, and from 1mn customers to 6mn, with one of the highest customer service records.
"Was that a moment in time? Were we just lucky? There's a little bit of intellectual curiosity here to see if I can do that again in an different industry with different people - by developing similar principles and creating a great culture. Can I do it twice?"
For Rowney, Nucleus is already a significant player, building on the brand and reputations of the adviser platform as well as recent acquisitions, such as James Hay.
"When I took on the James Hay business, I felt we had done something really special [at LV].... I felt this was an opportunity to work in wealth management and to bring in some outside thinking across the piece.
"We could now take a business that had been a great brand, had a great reputation but had probably lost its way a little bit and had suffered from a lack of investment, and it needed someone to create a vision that was compelling enough to support the private equity investment."
Further acquisitions
Rowney has spoken before to FT Adviser about not ruling out future purchases, but said with the completion of Curtis Banks, the team is already combining "three really interesting businesses that give us a good proposition, breadth and genuine scale."
