About us
Long Row Wealth Advisory is a boutique, fiercely independent financial advisory firm in South Oxfordshire. We serve UK-resident individuals, families and smaller companies — and their owners — with advice that draws on 20+ years of investment management.
The firm
The firm was founded in 2017 by Francois van der Merwe to provide investment consulting to mostly offshore ultra-high-net-worth families and institutions. Over time it adapted into what it is today: an FCA-authorised and regulated independent financial adviser to UK residents. That history still shapes the firm — the investment management came first, and the advice is built around it.
Most new clients arrive by referral from existing ones; enquiries are always welcome.
Independence
Independent has a defined meaning in the rules we are authorised under: our advice is not restricted to any provider's products, and we consider the whole of the relevant market rather than a panel of it. A firm that cannot say that has to describe itself as restricted instead — the distinction is regulatory, not marketing.
In practice it shows up in what we have no reason to recommend. There is no in-house fund range here that needs feeding, no provider whose products we are expected to place, and no target attached to any particular outcome. The investment research is our own work rather than a list handed to us, which is the point of the arrangement.
What we charge for that advice is set out plainly rather than left to be discovered.
The principal
Francois van der Merwe has managed portfolios across all major asset classes and investment styles, including significant experience with niche strategies such as alternatives and hedge funds. His approach is to pick and combine specialist fund managers from around the world, managing money in different and complementary ways.
01
Francois started in the actuarial field with Sanlam in South Africa, moving to the UK in 2000 to join the investment consulting practice at Towers Perrin (now part of Willis Towers Watson). He is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
02
A multi-manager portfolio manager at the Bank of Bermuda, HSBC and Rasini & C. — selecting and combining specialist funds — with a spell as Managing Director at the hedge fund Holte Capital in the mid-2000s.
03
Most recently before founding the firm, Deputy Chief Investment Officer and Head of Research for the public securities business at The Capital Partnership.
04
Founded Long Row Wealth Advisory in 2017, bringing the same manager-selection discipline to UK private clients and business owners. He holds the Level 4 Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning (DipPFS).
The shape of the firm
Long Row Wealth Advisory is deliberately small: the person who researches the portfolios is the person you meet, and there is nobody in between to be escalated to. Nothing about your plan is handed to someone you have not met.
The trade-off is worth stating rather than glossing over. A larger firm offers scale — a team, a rota, a department for every question. We offer the opposite, and think it suits the work: advice of this kind depends on knowing a client's circumstances properly, which is hard to hold across a rota and easy to hold across a conversation.
Where a question needs depth we do not have, we say so and bring in someone who has it — an intricate group scheme, an awkward underwriting history — then make sure what they recommend fits the rest of your plan.
Where we work
The firm is based in South Oxfordshire, and much of our work is with people in the county and across the Thames Valley. Distance is not the constraint it once was, though: we advise UK-resident clients elsewhere in the country on the same basis.
A first conversation is usually a video call, which is quicker to arrange and enough to establish whether we can help. After that we meet however suits you — in person where that is easier, on a call where it is not.