Stuart Dodson has been appointed CEO of True Potential Wealth Management.

He replaces Steve Hutton who left the business in July after eight months in the role of CEO and seven years with the business.

True Potential Wealth Management is the Newcastle-headquartered financial advice arm of the True Potential Group, one of the UK's largest financial advisory firms.

Mr Dodson brings over 25 years of experience, most recently as group managing director at Openwork where he oversaw distribution across the network’s wealth, mortgage and protection channels. At Openwork he helped manage 4,700 advisers and was key in securing £120m in private equity investment.

Other previous roles included managing director of Newcastle Financial Advisers where he reshaped the business’s adviser culture, built operational infrastructure and delivered revenue and profit growth over nearly a decade.

He has also held senior leadership positions at Legal & General, where he led financial advice teams across a range of distribution models, and at the Financial Services Authority, where he focused on financial education and consumer confidence in the regulated financial advice market.

At True Potential he will lead the development and delivery of the wealth management strategy as True Potential looks to strengthen its position as a leading UK wealth management firm. He will also join the True Potential Group executive committee.

Gerry Mallon, CEO of True Potential, said: “With an enormous advice gap in the UK, Stuart will play a key role in ensuring we continue to evolve our market-leading wealth proposition and award-winning technology so that we can help even more people to achieve their financial goals.”  

Mr Dodson will start his new role, based in Newcastle, on 5 January.

He said: "I’m thrilled to be joining True Potential Wealth Management at such an exciting time. The business has seen tremendous growth over recent years and, under Gerry’s leadership, has made clear the market opportunity and the level of ambition.”

The financial advice partnership had a tough year in 2023, reporting losses of £242m for 2024, from a £9m profit in 2023, according to accounts posted with Companies House in September.

The losses were driven by an exceptional cost of over £250m, the majority of which was related to its recent FCA skilled person review.

The exceptional costs included a £95m provision to cover potential redress related to a recent skilled person review into onboarded investments. A further £148.2m impairment was made against client onboarding assets, according to the financial report.

The firm said it expects to commence a redress exercise related to the review this year.

True Potential WM said that the 2024 losses posted were a “point of technical accounting” and would not impact its day to day business.

Despite the loss at True Potential WM, the wider True Potential Group reported a pre-tax profit of £111m for the period.