Admission to AIM and first day of dealings

29 March 2016

Harwood Wealth Management Group plc

("Harwood Wealth", the "Company" or the "Group")

Admission to AIM and first day of dealings

Harwood Wealth (AIM: HW.), a leading UK-based vertically integrated financial planning and discretionary wealth management group, announces that admission to trading on AIM will take place today and dealings in its ordinary shares are expected to commence at 08.00am under the symbol "HW.". N+1 Singer is acting as nominated adviser and sole broker to the Company.

N+1 Singer has raised £13.5 million (subject to Admission and before expenses) in an over-subscribed fundraise, of which £10.0 million was raised as new equity for the Company. The net proceeds will be used principally to provide funds for further acquisitions together with modest associated infrastructure costs.

Admission and placing statistics

Neil Dunkley, Founder and Joint Chief Executive Officer of Harwood Wealth, commented: "The Board is delighted to have successfully completed the IPO and raised funds to facilitate the next stage of the Company's development through further acquisitions. The UK wealth management industry is undergoing a number of changes that have made it very fragmented providing us with an attractive marketplace for consolidation. We look forward to providing our new shareholders with further updates as we achieve further growth."

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Note to editors:

Harwood Wealth is the parent company of a leading UK-based financial planning and discretionary wealth management group focused on the provision of investment advice, management and administration to its clients.

The Harwood Wealth business was founded in 2001 under the name Compass Wealth Management by Neil Dunkley and Mark Howard. Since formation, Compass has grown primarily through acquisition and has completed over 40 business and share purchases. Most recently, the Group acquired Meon Valley Financial Planning Limited on 1 February 2016 and, as of today, Wellian Investment Solutions Limited, an award winning investment management business. The Group focuses on the provision of financial advice to the mass affluent market (namely individuals with £200,000 to £500,000 of liquid financial assets or net assets, excluding main residence) through its core revenue generating services of advice and arrangement together with investment management. The Group has more than 80 FCA-regulated financial advisers and seven investment professionals, supported by an experienced administration and back-office team and AUI in excess of £1.25 billion. The Group is led by an experienced management team with Joint Chief Executives, Alan Durrant and Neil Dunkley, who together have over 40 years of financial planning and investment management experience.

The Directors consider that the UK wealth management industry is currently very fragmented and, as such, believe that a large proportion of the Group's anticipated future growth will continue to arise through acquisitions and market consolidation. Indeed, it has recently been reported that up to one third of regulated financial advisers would consider selling their businesses1, whilst separate data revealed that over the previous five quarters, there had been around 45 regulated financial adviser consolidations in each quarter.2 Further data published at the same time revealed that the UK market had 183 regulated financial adviser businesses worth £5 million or more and that below this were 5,600 businesses worth less than £5 million.3

1 In an article published by FT Adviser.com on 20 November 2015 (“One third of regulated financial advisers consider selling over age and risk”) it was reported that financial services consultancy Harrison Spence considered that one third of the 24,000 regulated financial advisers on its database would consider selling

2 Data published by IMAS Corporate Finance in May 2015: “IMAS in the news: Consolidation of smaller regulated financial advisers set to continue” (FT Adviser, 12 June 2015)

3 Data published by IMAS Corporate Finance: “IMAS in the news: Consolidation of smaller regulated financial advisers set to continue” (FT Adviser, 12 June 2015)