The UK wealth management sector is still highly fragmented, notwithstanding an ongoing boom in M&A activity. As a consequence, although deal flow appears to be relatively high, actual transactions tend to be relatively low value in nature.

There are exceptions, however. Abrdn and Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) planned purchases of Interactive Investor (ii) and Brewin Dolphin will both be around £1.5 billion, a very large amount within the context of the UK wealth ...