The brand new, fully updated print edition of the Spear’s 500 is on sale now.
The ninth edition of The Spear’s 500 spans 516 pages and contains some 1,675 profiles of leading advisers specialising in fields from wealth management to tax, philanthropy, property, family law – and several others besides. (You’ll find nannies, private doctors, whisky advisers and yacht brokers, too.)
The philosophy that underpins it all is the same as ever – to be the definitive resource for HNWs in search of the highest-quality specialist advice and services to support their work, their lives, their families and their ambitions.
The way we set about the task is to build on a foundation of research. Each year the Spear’s Research Unit reassesses and refreshes its rankings of the leading providers in each sector by gathering data from and about the advisers and firms themselves, assessing submissions, collating nominations, carrying out peer reviews, canvassing experts and conducting hundreds and hundreds of interviews.
The advisers are then scored using a proprietary system that assigns different weightings to certain attributes. These scores then feed directly into a new annual set of rankings – the Spear’s Indices. Each of these indices is published first online and then in print, in The Spear’s 500.
It is important to note that each one of the advisers included earns their selection on merit. It is not possible to buy one’s way into The Spear’s 500.
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[See also: Spear’s 500 research guidelines and calendar]
However, not all profiles are equal. Some are ‘enhanced’, meaning that they are accompanied by an image of the adviser, their contact details and include space for extra information. This extra information appears under the heading ‘Adviser profile’ and offers an opportunity for advisers or their firms to more fully describe their practice and the ways in which they are able to assist their clients, in their own words. (For this opportunity, they pay a fee.)
Believe it or not, this year’s mighty tome is a little smaller than some previous editions. But this isn’t because The Spear’s 500 is becoming less ambitious in its coverage. Far from it. Our database is bigger than ever; it includes 3,930 individual advisers as well as more than a thousand firms. And, though Spear’s began life in London and retains a UK bias, our outlook is increasingly international, with the UAE, USA, France & Monaco, Switzerland and Singapore among the best represented international jurisdictions.
All of the advisers and firms we cover can be found on spears500.com, where users can search and filter by ranking, location, specialism and a number of other attributes. Further updates year have made it easier than ever for users to find precisely the right advisers for their needs.
But, for all the travails of the print editions of other newspapers and magazines, the physical version of The Spear’s 500 still holds a special place in people’s hearts – often on their coffee tables, in their libraries or even aboard their yachts too. A venerable figure in the family office world recently told me there is seldom a day in his working life when he doesn’t refer to it for one reason or another. That’s a testament to the usefulness of the book itself, but more importantly to the quality of the people that are in it: the individuals who provide first-class advice and services, add real value to their clients – and make a tangible difference to their lives.
