Hoxton Wealth CEO Chris Ball started out in business after attending a KPMG careers’ fair. · Paul Adams
Chris Ball’s early penchant for graft and work ethic started as an 11-year-old in Watford doing newspaper delivery rounds and washing cars.
Twenty years later as a CEO, Ball was at pains to make sure the carpets were clean and the dishwasher emptied in the morning as he got his international wealth management startup off the ground in Dubai, along with numerous 12-hour flights to meet potential clients and returning the next day to a young family.
“It’s not all glamour and it was tough work in the beginning,” says Ball. “But if you can’t enjoy those parts and not go ‘big time’ too early you will never have a successful business going forward.”
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Ball’s business, Hoxton Wealth, largely caters for expats and advising the growing band of globally mobile clientele on financial planning, pensions and investments.
Now employing 300 staff across 20 countries since launching in 2018, Ball’s firm manages £2.5bn of its 7,000 clients’ investments, with the company’s latest turnover set to exceed £30m.
The firm’s average client has just shy of £600,000 of assets invested with Hoxton Wealth. It’s not all high net worth, however, with some clients investing as little as £20,000. “You don’t have to be a high-flying C-level executive to have an international posting,” says Ball. “You might want to retire in Spain and just want to be able to get the correct advice.”
Hoxton Wealth’s founder Chris Ball, front right, now employs 300 staff worldwide.
Ball had early aspirations of becoming a mechanic in his teens until his father intervened. He then set his sights as a Royal Navy marine, but asthma put paid to that dream.
At sixth form college, Ball was wide-eyed at seeing suits and well-spoken employees during a careers open day at KPMG. “It was something I wanted to be part of,” he recalls.
Ball enrolled on its school leaver programme and stayed at the firm for seven years before making the leap from accounting and tax advising to wealth management at Abu Dhabi-based deVeere Group via a close friend’s father.
He moved with his girlfriend and, tasked with cold calling, thought he would be heading home within weeks. He soon applied himself despite the couple living on an airbed in their cramped apartment. Six months on, Ball’s girlfriend discovered she was pregnant with twins.
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Three years and promotions later, Ball was asked to head up deVeere’s Qatar operations. He would fly from Abu Dhabi every Sunday and return home on Thursdays. However Ball harboured ambition to work for himself and be able to advise clients globally on cross-border financial planning.
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“I could see the rest of the world was going from upfront fees to generating long term relationships and working across multiple assets they had,” says Ball.
His wife, now pregnant with their third child, proved a supportive and driving asset in Ball’s decision to branch out as he co-founded Dubai-based Hoxton Wealth in 2018 with Matt Dean.
“There is a lot of DIY investor talk but getting the time to do that as a busy professional and having the ability to execute on an investment platform is quite difficult,” says Ball. “There is a real need for this service.
Hoxton Wealth CEO Chris Ball says giving clarity to clients is key.
“Most people don’t wake up and say they need a financial plan or a holistic view of their finances. Most people come to us with a specific problem, like a pension left in the UK or an expat whose insurance needs to move from Europe to Asia.”
There are complexities having assets booked across different regulatory regimes and dealing with tax planning, retirement saving, legal advice on wills and different currencies. The firm’s back office system called Matrix which works across different entities has helped to mitigate these issues, says Ball.
The 38-year-old says purpose bigger than revenue comes by “helping as many people as possible to seek clarity with their finances.” He points to Hoxton Wealth’s free app, currently numbering 12,000 clients, which is ‘people led, technology enabled’ and consumers (the average client age is mid 50s) able to consolidate their global assets into one platform.
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“The earlier we can help people before they get older, the easier it is and not bamboozle or leave them with more questions than they came with, that clarity piece is so important,” he says.
Hoxton Wealth has acquired eight financial adviser businesses to date since 2024, with seven in the UK, and is eyeing India in its future growth plans. The firm says since 2020 its US division has also grown “aggressively” where the need for financial planning is rising with expat Britons.
Ball, a passionate Arsenal fan, freely admits having learned from spread betting early in his career and lives by the mantra ‘If something is too good to be true early on, it probably is’.
The average client Hoxton Wealth deals with is in their mid-50s. · Jacob Wackerhausen via Getty Images
He lost £10,000 during one period in 2008. “Spread betting is very speculative and not a form of long term investing so there are probably personal scars,” he notes, “and especially when you’re younger they shape who you become.”
Hoxton Wealth’s boss says it now makes more sense than ever to utilise stocks and shares ISAs.
Indeed, most of what Hoxton Wealth advises isn’t individual stocks and shares or ‘buying low, selling high’, but about investing for the longer run.
“If people take the longer term view and make sure they don’t draw down for assets in an emergency they will generally do quite well,” adds Ball.
How to be effective in financial planning
Where I have seen others set up on their own and fail, they are great financial planners but aren’t business owners and want autonomy. That is a distraction from what they are good at and they get caught up in the HR, hiring, firing and recruiting.
As a financial planning business our clients are the most important as well as having great human capital with our planners. The average age of our advisors is 37, compared to the average age of a UK financial planner which is 55.
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