Jon Macintosh, Saltus Founder, on Being Voted Best Wealth Manager 2026

AI Generated Transcript

Holly Mead (00:04)
Welcome to Good Money Guide. My name is Holly Mead and today we are talking to John McIntosh. He’s founder and managing partner at Saltus, which has just been voted best wealth manager in our 2026 investing awards. Hello. Hello, Holly. Congratulations.

Jon Macintosh (00:17)
Hi- Yeah,

thank you, it’s exciting for us.

Holly Mead (00:22)
⁓ how long has Saltusbeen around and is this just one of many awards on your trophy shelf?

Jon Macintosh (00:29)
Well, we first got going in well, we started in 2004. We got our license in 2005 So this last year was our 20th anniversary of actually being in business. And yeah, we’ve won a few over the years, you know, we’re never complacent We love winning them

Holly Mead (00:43)
And it’s a constantly evolving space, I think. Well, it’s been some of the biggest developments in recent years that you’ve seen.

Jon Macintosh (00:51)
⁓ Where to even start? mean, when we first started, we were just ⁓ an investment manager and it took us 10 or 15 years to really get into financial planning. And for us as a business, that’s been the biggest change of putting financial planning in the front and the investment managers in the back. I think as an industry, there’s been so much regulatory change in that period and most of it is for the good, if I’m honest.

Holly Mead (01:16)
Yeah. And what do you think makes a good wealth manager?

Jon Macintosh (01:21)
I think obviously caring is number one, you know, really wanting the best for your client. But when we get feedback from our clients, the thing that I think they really value, there are a couple of things, but the number one thing they tell us is that we, especially with the advent of AI, we match individual prospects to a human based on our understanding of what they need and who they’re going to work well with. And that’s something where I think people give us overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Holly Mead (01:49)
You’ve mentioned the AI word. I was going to ask about this later, but ⁓ is that a threat or an opportunity for your business? How do you see it?

Jon Macintosh (01:57)
It’s both is the honest answer. I think in the long run we know we don’t know how it’s going to shake out but People predict that everyone’s going to be rather be dealt with by a bot than a human I think for people of my age that’s less likely to happen who knows for people who are you know, not yet in their 40s or 50s may maybe they’re going to be much more Willing willing to be dealt with fully digitally, but but it’s going to be a while away

I think that that’s the threat bit and it’s probably a way off. In terms of opportunity, we can make our teams much more efficient and enable them to spend more time actually talking to their clients and less doing admin and filling, typing things into computers.

Holly Mead (02:41)
So it’s been a tumultuous year in the market so far. I feel like as a wealth management firm, do you end up being sort of babysitter at this time, phone ringing off the hook? What do I do? Should I just buy oil?

Jon Macintosh (02:54)
Well, there’s always a tendency of clients to want to panic out in market volatility and to sell and buy something less risky. part of our job is actually teaching the client to relax and teaching them that their investments are for the long term and that our job is to manage through periods of volatility. And so I think we do an OK job. And actually, the phone doesn’t tend to ring that much when the market has panic.

Holly Mead (03:20)
stump bucket

Jon Macintosh (03:21)
We’re always trying to it.

Holly Mead (03:26)
What’s the biggest, I mean, now is a time when you do see investment mistakes, I think, because of that panic mode that people go into. What is some of the most common mistakes that you see time and again over the 20 years you’ve been running the business?

Jon Macintosh (03:39)
The biggest is the buying high and selling low is when everything’s gone up a lot you get you get fear fear of missing out and you pile into Nvidia or Apple or whatever it is when it’s just because it’s had a 10 year run of going up in a straight line and similarly panicking out because they say that markets go up on the escalator and down in the elevator and it’s when when they’re going down in the elevator it’s really hard to hold your nerve

Holly Mead (04:02)
Yeah. And we’re seeing that at the moment, but also that’s what’s bringing us opportunity. What do you think are some of the biggest themes and opportunities this year?

Jon Macintosh (04:12)
Well, I think right now, the emerging markets is the single biggest theme that we’re seeing where certainly relative to developed markets are pretty much the cheapest they’ve ever been. And yet at the same time, they don’t really have economic problems. They’ve come through any financial stress. Their earnings are going up. Their political systems are generally pretty safe and that you’re getting very, very high real yields on emerging market debt. And so all in all, the balance of low risk and potential high returns is

is probably as good as I’ve ever seen it in my career.

Holly Mead (04:44)
Talk to me about fees because I think wealth managers do feel the pressure on fees. been a lot of chat about it probably from the year dot, but particularly in the last five, 10 years. How do you deal with that and communicating the difference between price and value, which I think is sometimes not appreciated by clients.

Jon Macintosh (05:02)
In the words of Warren Buffett, price is what you pay and value is what you get. And I think we feel almost zero pressure on fees, if I’m honest. And when we started 20 years ago, we used to pretty much exactly the same as what we charge today. The difference is that people now pay more for financial planning and less for investment management. So there’s been a rebalancing between the two and people pay less for their platform. So financial planning fees have gone up.

and platform and DFM fees have come right down, but the total’s kind of pretty much where it was. And I think when we survey our customers, which we do every year, even though we don’t pretend to be cheap, that we always get the overwhelming majority of our clients saying that they think we’re good value.

Holly Mead (05:51)
What are some of the other trends that come out of that surveying?

Jon Macintosh (05:54)
We start off with this thing called a Net Promoter Score, which is asking your clients on a scale of one to 10, how many of them are willing to recommend you? And then you would do some math to work out who’s neutral, who’s negative, who’s positive. And over the years, our scores have just gone up and up.

Holly Mead (06:10)
I think a lot of people wonder what is the point at which I need financial advice because we maybe think of it as for older or wealthier people. Do you think there is a tipping point when we move from being able to sort our own finances to needing that extra bit of help?

Jon Macintosh (06:28)
One big mistake which are not our clients, but clients in general, including some of ours make is leaving it too late and hiding your head in the sand. The earlier you get on the bandwagon, the better because ultimately a lot of financial planning is about making sure that you’re secure in your retirement and you need to start saving earlier and probably a bit more than you thought in order to have even a semi-comfortable retirement. And it’s so much less painful if you figure that out.

in your 20s or 30s than if you come to it in your 40s or 50s.

Holly Mead (07:02)
But do you think so is that where technology can help because like you say that you might have a telephone call rather than sitting in a face to face environment because your needs are a bit simpler and then presumably if we bring AI in we can take that down a step further when your needs are really simple and you don’t even need to engage with a human.

Jon Macintosh (07:22)
Well, I think in theory that’s right, but in practice, it’s actually getting someone to engage and that seems to happen through human contact. Even though a bot can probably give you the same answers, that I think having someone who really takes the time to understand you on both a kind of personal, qualitative basis as well as just downloading a load of data into a spreadsheet and then explaining to you what can go wrong if you do leave it too late.

That’s what gets people actually to get their head out of the sand and actually make a move.

Holly Mead (07:57)
I also think sometimes it’s just that almost hand on a shoulder reassurance of yes that’s the right thing to do.

Jon Macintosh (08:04)
Well, if I’m really honest, what we sell is not investment returns or tax efficiency, but we sell peace of mind.

Holly Mead (08:10)
And so what are some of the tipping points that you see people come into the advice space at? Is it usually when they start a family or is it literally at the point of retirement?

Jon Macintosh (08:21)
It’s a number of different things, but I think it can be when they’ve made a mistake and they go, just don’t want to do that again, I need to get some help. And you can make a mistake with your investments or with tax or with particularly pensions can be a bit of a minefield. sometimes it’s at a point in time where, for example, you get a divorce or a relative dies and you get a lump of money or you lose a lump of

whatever it may be, that there’s a catalyst for you to think I really need to actually make a plan here.

Holly Mead (08:54)
Well, let’s let’s put the spotlight on you for a minute and do you put your money where your mouth is and follow all your own best advice?

Jon Macintosh (09:00)
100 yeah. Yeah,

I really do. And I think it’s one of the things we’ve always felt really strongly about at Soltis is that as chefs we need to eat our own cooking. And if we don’t want to eat our own cooking then other people shouldn’t come to our restaurant either.

Holly Mead (09:16)
What kind of investor are you?

Jon Macintosh (09:19)
⁓ Well, I am one who hands it over to our investment team and who’s happy to get into the passenger seat and not backseat drive. So I’ve learned that being half involved in investing is a dangerous place to be. You either need to be doing it full time for a living or being, you know, really a very, very engaged amateur or handed over. I’ve learned the hard way to hand it over.

Holly Mead (09:43)
Well, we always like to ask people what their biggest investment mistake is. That feels like a good point to ask that.

Jon Macintosh (09:50)
Biggest investment mistake? Well, in a previous career, I worked in the private equity industry and we bought a Formula One team, which was called Arrows, which the older Formula One enthusiasts will remember, which was run by Tom Walkinshaw. And we didn’t really understand the industry and we didn’t really do our homework on the guy who was running it. And we lost 100 % of quite a big investment.

Holly Mead (10:16)
did you get to go to a later Grand Prix races?

Jon Macintosh (10:18)
I hate Grand Prix races. Partly as a result of that race.

Holly Mead (10:20)
That’s

another reason that’s terrible investment. Exactly. Okay. Let’s go to the other end of the sea. So any particularly good investments that stick in your mind?

Jon Macintosh (10:31)
I think the best investment that we’ve ever made at Salters was 10 years ago and actually it’s the gift that still keeps on giving that after the financial crisis a lot of the Icelandic banks you may remember had got very into the whole private equity and leverage finance world and had gone over their skis. They grew very very quickly and then they blew up and there were a couple of them called Landis Bank and Calp thing which went bust.

and they’d made a ton of private equity investments. And we, together with a specialist manager, were approached to see whether we would buy the portfolio and we bought the whole portfolio out and structured it into a fund. And because they were a forced seller and because the market was on its knees, secondary private equity market was on its knees, we ended up, I think we’ve made six times our money on that investment and it’s still paying out.

Holly Mead (11:24)
Yeah, okay, six times feels like a… So obviously private equity investments can go wrong, but I think for a lot of people they feel really exciting. Often it’s companies they know and use and are seeing growing and you think, I can have a slice of the next big thing. Is it a space that’s actually appropriate for retail investors?

Jon Macintosh (11:26)
Pretty good.

So the whole private asset space and by that I include private equity of the larger leveraged buyout variety and venture capital which is backing smaller often techie startups but also increasingly private credit. They’ve all become much more prevalent and much more ⁓ available to retail investors. But if I’m honest I see this as like a train smash waiting to happen because I think

you’re sacrificing liquidity and low fees for illiquidity and high fees and less transparency and less regulation. So whilst I know it’s favour of the month and this is probably going against the grain, I think private investors need to really mind their eye and especially when there’s like a lot of capital chasing less opportunities and particularly capital where the investor is not particularly used to dealing with those pitfalls that are particular to that sector.

it turns to not end well. So I think if you’re going to invest in private assets, then you want to do it through a manager who’s been doing it for a long time.

Holly Mead (12:54)
But that’s going to get less appealing now they’re cutting the tax relief from VCTs. Do you think that’s a concern?

Jon Macintosh (13:00)
Well, I think VTTs is a small subset of the private assets market and VTTs have obviously been around for a long time. ⁓ So, but it really depends whether your your rationale for investing is because I want to save tax or because I want an exciting asset that’s going to make me lots of money over the long run tends to be a bit of either or.

Holly Mead (13:18)
What is your top bit of investment advice that you give out the most often?

Jon Macintosh (13:25)
I would say the single biggest bit of advice I would give anyone about their money is to remember that your money is a means to an end and not an end in itself and because people can become very fixated on the pot and not about what it’s for and money should be a means to either you having an easier life or helping someone else having an easier life or or leaving the world a better place than you found it and when people can make that shift I think they have a much better relationship with their finances.

Holly Mead (13:54)
It’s something you hear a lot, isn’t it? That you spend so much of your life in that accumulation phase that once people reach retirement or later life, actually spending it is psychologically a real difficult mind shift, isn’t it?

Jon Macintosh (14:07)
Yeah, I think giving it away is a great thing to learn.

Holly Mead (14:09)
Yeah, I mean, if anyone wants my bank details, if they’re looking for a willing recipient. But how do you coach people through that?

Jon Macintosh (14:17)
I think the central part of the financial planning process is having a really thorough cash flow model, which is basically giving you the comfort that you’re going to be okay and running scenarios to show if the market does this or if you retire early or if you retire late, we can still make sure that at the end of the day, you’re going to have enough money to get by and that anything beyond that is just surplus. And so therefore, if you want to buy a sports car or buy your kids a flat or

give it to a good cause. You can do that and sleep easily at night.

Holly Mead (14:51)
So one thing we like to ask everyone as well is for anyone who wants to get better at money, understand a bit more about investing, what is a book that you always recommend?

Jon Macintosh (15:01)
there’s so many great books written on the subject from the very technical about how to be a good investor to the kind of psychology of the psychology of investing and and being a good investor is partly about detailed analysis and and also a lot about about the about having the right mindset but I think the best book I’ve ever read about money is a book by Niall Ferguson called the Ascent of Money which is that a history of money from when it was invented in Egyptian times

through to now and it’s not really about being a good investor but I think it’s a great book in that it makes you understand where money’s come from and what it’s all about and why it’s worth something and how you value it.

Holly Mead (15:43)
I always like hearing about people’s book recommendations as well because it kind of tells you a lot about the person as well. So you’re just out giving out copies about Egyptian money to people. That could be a good thing to send on the zero birthday. So I feel like this is a constantly evolving space, wealth management, know, regulation is always changing. The government’s now on this drive to get people investing. How do you see things developing in the next few years?

Jon Macintosh (15:56)
Hey.

Well, you know that unfortunately one certainty and there’s something which is not cyclical is that the Treasury and the government just can’t stop mucking about with pensions rules and tax rules and that kind of keeps us in business because you know they go right use your pension as an IHT vehicle because it’s going to be exempt from your estate and then they go no it’s not. Well then they say here’s the lifetime allowance which means you’re to cap what you can put in your pension that now we’re going to do away with it. So people are constantly confused.

by what the rules are. And if you don’t know the ground rules, it’s impossible to make a really sensible long-term plan. So I think that that’s something which I guess, unfortunately, is here to stay.

Holly Mead (16:49)
I should imagine that budget day is always a busy day for phone calls at the office.

Jon Macintosh (16:54)
Yeah, it always leads to huge amounts of speculation in the run-up and then endless notes, people summarizing what’s happened. But at the end of the day, think we can’t make a financial plan around guessing what’s going to happen in the budget. you try and make people a sensible plan, which is going to be sensible regardless of what happened in the budget. And then you make small calibrations afterwards rather than big U-turns.

Holly Mead (17:22)
Is there one rule that you would get rid of or bring back that they’ve done away with in recent years?

Jon Macintosh (17:31)
I think it’s really sad and counterproductive that they’ve whittled away entrepreneurs’ relief to be so little and so low now. I think that’s really bad for the long-term future of the country.

Holly Mead (17:42)
Speaking of entrepreneurs, the self-employed tend to need more financial advice. We know they’re a lot further behind in pension saving. Is that a big part of your client base?

Jon Macintosh (17:53)
We’ve got a lot of founders and small business owners, some small and some not so small, but yeah, we absolutely do.

Holly Mead (18:01)
And what unique challenges do you think they’re facing?

Jon Macintosh (18:05)
think you just you have less certainty of your income because because you don’t have this nice thing called a salary but but at the same time you’ve got a greater possibility of really making some some big money at the end if your business is a real success and so that you’re dealing with greater volatility and greater dispersion of potential outcomes which makes making a plan that much more challenging

Holly Mead (18:27)
So we said lots of opportunities for advice firms coming up, but what do you think are the biggest challenges for your industry?

Jon Macintosh (18:35)
I think it’s a great industry because I think it provides a useful service to people who, everybody needs a financial plan. And so I feel great about the financial planning industry. I think it’s here to stay. think AI is obviously a threat as well as an opportunity. And I actually struggle to think of anything which would seriously knock it off course. think scandals are not helpful for us where…

one of our competitors does something really stupid. But luckily these are relatively few and far between.

Holly Mead (19:11)
How do you, how does that filter through to you? What’s the ripple effect?

Jon Macintosh (19:15)
of a scandal. Well, I think it depends where the scandal arises, when miss-selling scandals where it’s been advisors who have been doing short-term greedy things which are not necessarily in clients interest that that gives the whole industry a bad name and probably puts people off seeking financial advice which is to the detriment of everybody. But I think the regulator has been getting better and better over the years and well sometimes they’re accused of

bolting or shutting stable doors after the horses have bolted. But in general, we have a way more professional industry with better qualifications and chartered status and cash flow modeling and fees charged from the client rather than from the provider. There are so many things about the industry which are radically better than it was when I first came into it 21 years ago.

Holly Mead (20:07)
How do you think then that the industry can keep appealing to the next generation of advisors? Because it’s kind of a shrinking industry, isn’t it?

Jon Macintosh (20:14)
Well, is it? Because I think, I know there a of advisors are ⁓ a lot of IFAs came in came to be IFAs after after depolarization about whenever it was 30 years ago. And a lot of those people are now hitting retirement age. And so there’s a decent number of retirees. But at the same time, you’ve got many, many firms who are now recruiting advisors as graduate trainees and running academies.

And I think it’s being filled up from one end just as quickly as it’s shrinking at the other end.

Holly Mead (20:50)
So we’re going to wrap up, but just tell us what’s coming up for Saltusover the coming months and years.

Jon Macintosh (20:56)
So I think, you we just keep plugging away. think my analogy is that we take our putter and just chip the ball down the fairway and try not to do anything too clever or change too quickly. And just to always be on the lookout for investment opportunities and tax savings, but to really, you know, if it ain’t broke, not to fix it.

Holly Mead (21:19)
Well, thank you again for coming in and congratulations on the award.

Jon Macintosh (21:23)
Well, Holly, thank you for having me here and we’re thrilled about the award and we’re really grateful to the Good Money Guide.

Holly Mead (21:30)
And thank you for joining us. If you are a Salters client or customer and have an experience or review to share, you can head to the Good Money Guide review page and we would love to hear from you.