Porta Partners became an appointed representative (AR) of Söderberg’s recently launched restricted advice network in April.

This is more significant than the headline makes it sound. It appears to be another piece of Söderberg & Partners’ attempt to build a UK adviser-distribution machine that increasingly resembles SJP structurally — while competing for firms that are actually leaving SJP.

Porta Partners was formerly Porta Wealth Management, an SJP partner practice. In May 2025 it announced that it was leaving SJP’s restricted network, explicitly saying the move was intended to improve “client value, transparency, and agility.” It initially became an appointed representative of Cheetham Jackson.

The interesting subsequent development is that Porta is now an AR of Söderberg & Partners Financial Planning Ltd. Porta’s own regulatory disclosure confirms that relationship, and the FCA Register shows managing partner James McPartland associated with both Porta Partners and Söderberg.

So the sequence is roughly:

SJP restricted network → leave SJP → independent/restructured Porta → join Söderberg restricted network → Söderberg takes equity stake.

That last step matters.

There are some clues in the corporate structure. Porta Partners Holdings Ltd was incorporated on 16 July 2025. Companies House records show that James McPartland, Nicholas Marshall and Robert Jackson ceased to be persons with significant control on 31 July 2025. At almost exactly the same time their directorships ended and Magnus Wikner was appointed as a director.

That suggests the Söderberg relationship was being constructed corporately considerably before the AR switch became publicly visible. I haven't found a reliable public source specifying the exact percentage Söderberg has now purchased, so I wouldn't state a percentage without the underlying article or announcement.

The wider context is important. Söderberg entered the UK market only in 2023 and has been buying minority and majority stakes in advisory businesses aggressively. Its stated model has been to provide capital, technology and infrastructure while allowing firms to retain their local identity.

But the strategy has moved beyond simply acquiring independent IFAs. It has also built a restricted advice network, and Financial News recently described Söderberg as having accumulated stakes in around 30 UK advice businesses while actively attracting former SJP firms and personnel.

And then in July this year came the much bigger move: Söderberg agreed to acquire Benchmark from Schroders, bringing a business supporting around 1,000 advisers, 200 advice firms and £31bn of assets under influence into the group.

So I think there are two stories here.

The obvious story is:

“Söderberg invests in another growing advice practice.”

The systems story is:

Söderberg is assembling an alternative adviser ecosystem — capital + network permissions + technology + investment infrastructure + adviser firms + adviser recruitment.

And Porta is especially revealing because it came out of SJP.

There is an intriguing tension in Porta's own positioning. Porta says traditional financial advice has been too product-led, that money should be a tool for people's lives, and that it left its previous institution because it wanted something different. Its language is remarkably close in places to the philosophy we've been developing: life first, money second, greater transparency, and helping clients create the future they want “on your own terms.”

Yet commercially it has moved from one vertically organised restricted ecosystem into another — and its new network principal has now become an owner.

That doesn't mean the two models are identical. But it raises the question I think is much more interesting than whether Söderberg is “better than SJP”:

Has Porta escaped vertical integration — or merely changed vertical integrator?

There is also a deeper industry pattern developing. SJP demonstrated that enormous enterprise value could be created by organising advisers, client relationships, recurring revenues and investment assets into one controlled economic system. Competitors do not necessarily need to copy SJP's branding or exact remuneration arrangements to recognise the economic power of that architecture.

Söderberg appears to be building what we might call “distributed vertical integration”: leave the adviser firm's brand and entrepreneurs visible at the front, while progressively owning or controlling important layers behind them — equity, regulatory network, technology, investment infrastructure and capital.

That is potentially much more attractive to entrepreneurial advisers than traditional consolidation because they retain some identity and equity upside.

But from the consumer's perspective, the critical question remains unchanged:

Who owns the economic system around my money, and how does that ownership influence what I'm encouraged to do?

That, rather than whether the sign above the adviser's door says SJP or Porta Partners, is where I think this story becomes particularly relevant to the Academy's agency-versus-dependency argument.