In a picturesque valley deep in the Surrey stockbroker belt, the former manager of a £5.5 billion fund has just shaken hands with a client whose assets amount to less than a third of the £50,000 minimum threshold.

‘We’re not going make any money out of him,’ Craig Harper concedes, before turning to a six-by-five-feet collage of the residents of Mole Valley hanging on the wall behind him. ‘But this is what it’s all about: helping people in the community.’

It is an exceptional case however, he adds, but only because Harper has to be realistic about the economics of business, having staff to pay.

In a business where the majority are motivated by…

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