Lifetime achievement award for wealth manager Steel

The founder of a Linlithgow-based wealth management firm, which now looks after over £1.25 billion in client assets, has been presented with the prestigious WeDO Scotland Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship.

Alan Steel, Chairman of Alan Steel Asset Management, was presented with the coveted award during a ceremony held at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh last week by fellow entrepreneur and founding director of Macintyres of Edinburgh Jewellers, Gaynor Turner.

Originally from Bo’ness, Mr Steel founded Alan Steel Asset Management in 1975 and now employs 43 staff.

His was the first Scottish-based IFA to win the renowned Money Marketing UK’s Best Investment IFA Award, and the first business ever to receive that designation three times.

A well-known cynic of the UK financial services industry, and the first to predict the demise of Equitable Life in the late 1990s, Mr Steel has written numerous columns in national newspapers, and predicted the beginning of the current equity bull market back in March 2009.

From early on his career, Mr Steel resolved to “change the world and put things right” for ordinary people caught out by a financial system that does not necessarily look after their best interests.

He said: “I never made it as an actuary. I failed the medical because I had a sense of humour.”

He decided to become an independent financial advisor (IFA), and joined Borders-based RM Leask Insurance in 1973. Two years later he set up his own firm in Linlithgow, where his family had moved when he was a young boy.

He remarked: “I actually started out as an actuary, but I failed the medical when they found out I had a sense of humour.”

Speaking about the honour Mr Steel said: “Awards of this type are as rare as a Scottish summer, so I’m very fortunate to have received it. I credit this award to the experiences I’ve gained through my dual nationality; half Bo’ness, half Linlithgow.”

“In a strange way this reminds me of when I was growing up and my Granny Mackay, though quite poor, had a picture of the royals above the mantlepiece. Next to it she hung a photo of me when I was three years old on a tricycle. The proximity made me think I was fifth in line for the throne! This award almost makes up for that early disappointment in life.”