AWD Chase de Vere is to ditch its Home Finance and Read operations following after a strategic review of the business by its parents AWD AG and Swiss Life.

The move is designed to allow AWD - which was fined £1.12 million by the FSA for ‘serious failings’ in its pension transfer, pension annuity and income withdrawal business on Tuesday - to focus on building its core wealth management and consulting businesses to meet its objective of becoming the UK’s leading independent adviser.

Home finance, which specialises in mortgage consulting, has taken a severe hit in the property and financial crisis. Read is a niche adviser firm which specialises on the retirement market.

AWD Group chief executive Mike Kirsch said: 'Both AWD Home Finance and Read are good businesses with a positive future, however, they have very different business models from AWD Chase de Vere, are facing difficult market conditions and operate at the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum from our wealth management business. 

'As such they offer no real business synergy and we believe the interests of our shareholders as well as Read and Home Finance are best served by them developing outside the group.'

He added: 'This is a new dawn for AWD Chase de Vere in the UK. We can now put the difficulties of the past behind us and concentrate on achieving our vision of becoming the UK’s leading independent advisory business. 

'We have received the unequivocal backing and a substantial capital injection from our owners AWD AG and Swiss Life giving us the financial resources and regulatory capital to further develop and invest in our core UK businesses.'

Kirsch said the move means AWD Chase de Vere will be one of the most financially strong advisory businesses in the UK, which should help the group attract the best calibre of advisers to join the firm.