Wealth manager and Financial Planner Succession Wealth - recently bought by Aviva for £385m – has been targeted by fraudsters with a cyber attack.

The wealth manager said it has launched an investigation into how the attack happened and has introduced extra security measures.

Succession did not share more details of the nature of attack or say if client data had been compromised.

A spokesperson for the firm said: “We are working to assess and resolve this situation but at this stage we cannot comment on the nature of this attack.

“We will give further updates as and when appropriate to do so. We understand this will cause concern for our clients and we apologise for this.”

Succession Wealth was established in 2009 and is a major UK wealth manager and Financial Planner. It has 16 offices in the UK and a workforce of 600, including 180 wealth planners looking after 18,000 individuals, families and corporations.

Succession was acquired by Aviva plc in August 2022.

The Financial Planning industry has been targeted by several cyber attacks over the past few months.

In October the Chartered Insurance Institute and Personal Finance Society were hit by a cyber attack which saw some members personal data accessed.

In March last year, the Financial Conduct Authority reported that cyber attack incidents had risen 52% in 2021, with 116 reports received.

A third of the incidents reported may have resulted in confidentiality of company or personal data being compromised.

The FCA deems an incident to be material if it results in a significant loss of data, results in the unavailability or control of IT systems, affects large numbers of customers, or results in unauthorised access to information systems.

One in five of the incidents reported to the FCA in 2021 involved ransomware, according to IT security firm Picus Security which submitted a freedom of information request to the regulator. Two thirds (65%) of the cyber incidents reported in 2021 were due to cyber attacks.