On the financial industry's new front line

After serving in Bosnia with the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, the economics graduate joined Edinburgh Fund Managers in 1999, and via SWIP, Edinburgh Partners and Adam & Co he reached Thomas Miller Investments in 2012, becoming head of private clients for the UK-wide business five months ago.

Thomas Miller, a British insurance business dating back to 1885, launched the private client division in 2012, and also works with financial planning firms to offer the expertise of Thomas Miller Investments, which runs £2.9billion and is headed by former EFM and Glasgow Investment Managers leader Mike Balfour.

All manner of clients, when personal pensions are freed in April from their historic restrictions, may have more need than ever of their advisers and managers.

"The changes to pension rules and regulations are probably one of the most fundamental shifts I will see in my investing lifetime, and the effects won't be felt properly for years, probably decades," Mr Herberts says. "What it means is nobody gets a DB (final salary) scheme any more, effectively we are all responsible, risk is no longer on our employers it's on us, and we need advice."

He goes on: "I think people will start building up significant savings pots to cover their retirement plans and good planners are absolutely vital to that process."

Those so-called "early accumulators" are the ideal targets for private client firms. "We will look at people with £250,000 because in this environment that is a decent pot by anyone's standards...but you have to do a job." It should not be about "insurance companies' fat premiums and commissions, which arguably has happened in the past", Mr Herberts suggests.

But annuities, staple of insurers' profits, are not dead, he adds. "Good planners will realise they play a part, buying an annuity from a reputable provider at a decent price offloads a little bit of risk, there is going to be a place for annuities."

It has yet to be appreciated that "the consequences long-term on the working population could be huge," the adviser says.

"In an environment where you take all the risk, but you are much more flexible in terms of how you take the benefit, there's the opportunity to stop working earlier, that could have profound effects on the workforce."

Mr Herbert was born in Aldershot into a military family and his father came from Kirkcudbrightshire. "I had six great years in the Army, I ended up in Edinburgh with an economics degree from Newcastle University looking for something to do with it, and a few friends in investment management."

Informal networks, as well as The Officers Association Scotland, work in many sectors to help those leaving a shrinking Army to build new careers. In the financial sector, Edinburgh is a good place to land. "It is the right size, and if you get a foot in the door you can network effectively, everyone is willing to talk to you," Mr Herberts says.

The EFM connection led to Mr Herberts following one of its stars Graeme Campbell first to SWIP, where he worked on the UK, US and global desks, and then to Edinburgh Partners, the boutique co-founded by Mr Campbell in 2006. He recalls the move as one from "a nebulous large organisation that is difficult to control" to a small one where "it is the same people delivering the sales message and the investment".

Mr Herbert's next move saw him reunited with another former EFM colleague, as in 2008 he became understudy at Adam & Co to chief investment officer Harry Morgan. When in 2012 Mr Morgan hopped across Charlotte Square to head up the new private client arm at Thomas Miller, Mr Herberts followed, becoming first his deputy then his successor on Mr Morgan's move to Anderson Strathern - in the TM business headed by a third ex-EFM colleague Mr Balfour.

"It's an opportunity to do something with a company with a long history, to build something from the ground up," Mr Herberts says, noting that the Thomas Miller style has Mr Balfour's stamp of a macro-led investment process. The group's investment platform offers a full service, full fee option or an expertise-only option for financial planners.

"When we set up we were probably looking at very traditional routes to market, either direct or through your high-end solicitors and accountants, who are still very important, particularly solicitors in Scotland in terms of finding clients. But we realised early on that we were missing out on an enormous part of the market - the financial planners and the IFAs who in the current market conditions will have increased importance."

Good advisers have always looked at their clients' long-term needs.

"We are very much objectives based, either with the adviser or the individual client. You can model what is required in order to achieve certain goals - you want to retire at 55 on an income of x and you are 35 now, so you need to compound your growth at x, and history suggests you should be in this kind of long-term asset allocation and you need this amount of performance."

But now there is the added spice of pension freedom. "If you have to think about your pension you have to think about everything else, the client becomes much more aware of what they need."

Mr Herberts admits the current market is tricky, following big equity gains in 2013 and with gilts unattractive. "Clients who have been in cash since 2009 are thinking they have missed the boat, and we have had a few conversations like that - there is unlikely to be another 2013 environment any time that soon." But the TM team still sees "economic tailwinds" in the form of US and (weaker) UK growth, despite geopolitical risk and the possibility of "oil-based defaults at a national level".

Mr Herberts therefore stresses the value of "uncorrelated" assets such as infrastructure and commercial real estate, and notes the group's expertise in catastrophe reinsurance. Operating on a different risk cycle, that strategy dates back to the Victorian founding of the core business by Newcastle shipowner Thomas Mueller 130 years ago.