171. Trust Is Built, Not Bought: The Allan Gray Way

What if the strongest investment edge isn’t a clever model, but a structure built to think in decades? We sit down with Tamryn Lamb, Head of Retail at Allan Gray, to unpack how a private, perpetual ownership model shapes behaviour, protects conviction through tough cycles, and keeps the focus squarely on client outcomes. From the origins of the firm’s valuation-led approach to the practical realities of running a platform that hosts multiple managers, we dig into the details that make investors more resilient and advisers more effective.
 
 Tamryn traces the firm’s journey from its founding visionto pivotal stress tests like the late-90s tech boom, when avoiding fads meant underperformance and painful outflows before recovery. The difference, she explains, was not just philosophy but governance: an ownership structure and long-term orientation that is designed to absorb short-term pressure so investment and business teams can hold the line. We connect that lesson to today’s environment, where this organisational design empowers long-term decisions, improves service consistency, and avoids knee-jerk pivots that hurt clients.
 
 We also explore the ultimate ownership structure of Allan Gray; namely the Allan and Gill Gray Foundation. This entity is the majority owner of the Allan Gray and Orbis asset management businesses, into perpetuity, directing the dividends it receives : to philanthropic purposes across the regions where it operates. It doesn’t soften commercial standards—performance, competition, and client service still drive the work—but it does expand the meaning of success. When clients prosper, communities benefit too. Along the way, we clarify a common misconception about the platform: it’s a single point of administration where clients can hold many managers’ funds, not just Allan Gray’s, giving advisers a simpler, more complete portfolio view.
 
 Education runs through every theme here. Clear explanations, transparent reporting, and honest conversations reduce anxiety and build the trust needed to stay invested when markets are loud. That’s the quiet advantage: informed clients make calmer choices, and calmer choices let compounding do its job. If you care about governance, service, and the human side of investing, this conversation will sharpen how you evaluate managers and platforms alike.
 
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello everybody, welcome to Know Your Money. I'm Bronwyn Wayner.

Allan Gray’s Role And Partnership

SPEAKER_00 0:16

And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast. Hello, everybody. Hello Bronwyn. Very lucky to have Tamron Lamb from Alan Gray in the studio. Welcome Tamrin. Thanks so much for making the time and effort. Come all the way from Cape Town.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

Yeah. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

And you're head of retail, which is a massive job at Alan Gray. And Alan Gray are a really keeps me busy. And you're a really important partner in our business, our practice, and we've engaged with you for many years now, and we really enjoy the platform net. So we all love to have you here.

What Allan Gray Does

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Yeah, and we value that partnership. So thank you for the trust and confidence that uh places in us.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Yeah, so who is Alan Gray? What is Alan Gray?

Platform Misconceptions Cleared

SPEAKER_03 1:01

So Alan Gray is an investment management and administration business. So what we do is we offer two main services to clients. We uh our history was started off just offering uh investment management. We it was in 1973. And at the time, our style of investing was quite different to what you saw uh in the market. And we were long-term oriented, focused on valuations, building portfolios that look quite different to the benchmark. Uh and we're called Alan Gray after our founder, who was an individual, a man, named Alan Gray, grew up in the Eastern Cape, uh, was studied an essay, but then actually went to Harvard. And actually, when he applied to Harvard in his application form, they said, Well, why should we take you? And he said, Well, because I want to introduce professional asset management in South Africa. Uh so he went to Harvard, worked at Fidelity, and then came back and started Alan Gray. And so for the first almost 25 years or so of our history, we were largely an institutional kind of business, so institutional clients and pension funds. Uh, and then we expanded to offer our services more broadly to advisors such as yourselves and obviously your uh end clients. And then in 2005, we launched an investment platform, and that's our administration business. And really, it's just that we offer our own funds alongside offerings from other managers, and it creates a nice sort of single point of contact, you know, for you to administer your client's entire portfolio rather than having to go to uh individual platforms to do it. So that's who we are and why we're called Alan Gray. Okay, awesome.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

And I think that is a question we often get with clients when we say we're using Alan Gray as the provider, then they assume that everything is in Alan Gray. But what you basically explaining to everybody is you're just the provider and they can have any funds on there.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

And we we tend to use Alan Gray as the provider because they have everything done right and that their main focus is the client and the best for them.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Do you want to tell us a little bit more about what's unique about you've got a unique structure as well?

Why Ownership Structure Matters

Surviving Tough Markets Privately

The Foundation And Philanthropy

Purpose, Education, And Transparency

SPEAKER_03 3:19

So uh maybe before I talk about how we structure the business, uh I'll go back to that point. And Alan had this view right from the very beginning that you know uh handing over your money to someone uh as a client requires trust and faith and confidence. And so as a business, you have to do everything you can to build trust and confidence, and because that's the only way you can get clients to stay throughout the cycle. And what Waddle's one way of doing that is making sure that you put service sort of front, front and kind of foremost. And so we we do invest a lot in our service proposition uh to yourselves and to your clients because we think that helps, you know, ease what can sometimes feel like a volatile journey. Uh, and then we try and make your guys' lives uh easier by you know, you can have one view of your clients' portfolios. But yes, as you say, they could be invested via the platform, but not in an Allen Gray fund. And it's a pretty competitive market. And our people often ask us why we're different, and you know, normally the like typical response is, oh, well, we've got like a unique investment philosophy, and we've got great people and our track record and process and and all of those things are true. We're all proud of them, you know. But if I told you we buy low and kind of sell high, that's not gonna sound particularly unique. I mean, what asset manager is gonna tell you they do the reverse. So if I were to say what's actually quite different about us is the way that we're structured as a business, particularly our ownership structure. And it's actually when we think about ownership structures and you think about any financial service business, be it an asset manager or an insurer or an advisor, it is it is important that that structure you know supports whatever strategy you've uh decided to kind of adopt, and that's your vision. And for us, it's to create long-term wealth for clients and to help in that process. And if we are long-term oriented, we we sort of we believe in the power of time arbitrage, you you need to have long-term owners and owners who kind of share that mindset. And that's why we've always been privately owned. And that private, that ownership structure, what what else is it supposed to do? It needs to make sure that when you're at your worst time as a business, so your almost your failure point does the ownership structure stand up and and and help protect you at that point. And if I think at one of the worst periods in our history, it was probably the late 90s when we were underperforming because we didn't have any of the tech shares. And while we went on to subsequently outperform a year later, we lost close to 70% of our business. And that's after 25 years. And it was only because we were privately owned and we had the the shareholder that we do, which was then the Gray family, uh, who took a very long-term mindset and were able to provide the buffer and the resilience to enable us to go through. Because often at that point, as a manager, you can capitulate and then end up doing the wrong thing for your plans. Uh and then one one sort of interesting extension of that ownership structure now. So we've always, as I say, we've always been privately owned. But uh in 2015, which was, you know, then almost kind of 40, 40 years into our history, uh, Alan and his family, Alan and Jill Gray, uh, Jill was his wife, they were finally able to execute on one other part of what was actually really more of a personal vision from their perspective, was, you know, they start he had started out the business to make a difference to clients. And his view was, you know, if if he was successful in doing that and he put clients first and he geared the interests of the business to clients, then the firm would be successful. And then he had a decision, how must I structure, you know, this business to a ensure it endures indefinitely? Uh, and how can I make that difference that I'm making for clients? You know, how can I potentially amplify uh that impact? And, you know, as Alan Gray, the business, we can't really take credit for this decision that he he then made. Uh, but I do feel proud of being part of an organization that that has the structure. So what he did is previously the ownership was held in a series of family trusts, and in 2015, he transferred the majority of the family stakes into a foundation. And he had searched for almost eight years to find this particular corporate structure. Uh, it's based in uh Guernsey, and it has a dual purpose. Uh, and the the two purposes are sit alongside each other, and the one is to be the perpetual owner of the asset management businesses and to allow us to continue to execute on our purpose, which is to, you know, help clients create long-term wealth and financial security. And so that means, you know, was you know, for for us, it means we can never be sold because our majority owner will is kind of enshrined in the uh as the foundation. But then the second part was really their vision, and that was that their family's interests in the businesses, that the dividends from those stakes would be devoted exclusively to philanthropy. Uh and, you know, for me, what does that mean? It doesn't change actually what I do on a day-to-day basis. We're very commercial, we're very performance-oriented, we we know we operate in a very comp competitive industry, and we're, you know, our fo my focus is to make a difference for clients, like it is for you guys. And I'm sure like for you guys, that gives me real meaning. Uh, and it's definitely one of the reasons I've stayed at Allen Gray. But it it actually makes that meaning a little bit bigger for me that I know that if we do a good job for clients, not only will clients be better off, but actually the fruits of that success will get, you know, directed towards maybe maybe making society a little bit better too. So it's not something we talk about too much because you know, it's really what's important for clients and for you is that you know our structure is is solid and it's perpetual, and we think it's designed deliberately to help us do the right thing for your clients. Um, but it does give us at Alan Gray a kind of, you know, a an additional sense of meaning that we know that you know, these dividends, the vast majority of our dividends are devoted towards, you know, grants, uh towards like philanthropies we run, or when I say we, the foundation, I shouldn't take credit for it. Uh, and then also just other initiatives that we think uh um look like they are uh worthy of kind of directing the money towards, and it's all in the areas in which Alan Gray and Aubus operate.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

But we were we we saw that philanthropy uh presentation at the end of last year. And us as planners don't also realise the extent of how that is working. We were really so impressed. So we you know I think maybe you should I don't know, it's hard to blow your own trumpet about it, but it is it's a lovely way of knowing that, as you say, the fruits of the success is are going to the right people and people who need it, startups and etc.

SPEAKER_03 10:42

We were really impressed by and I also think it's something we're proud of, but we also want to say it's not a reason why you should almost invest with Allen Grey, but it is, you know, it is an important part of who we are.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

And I think it just highlights that sense of purpose. Um, for us, our clients are also so important to us, but the broader market and trying to make society better is the cornerstone of why we've started this podcast because it's not only our clients that will listen to this, but it's other people that we may not be able to help, but they can just have some of that knowledge, and I think that's the same purpose with Alan Gray. Yes, you're trying to help your clients, but you're also trying to help society, and I think it's a a brilliant thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

Yeah, and certainly being able to lead a life where you feel like you're fulfilling your purpose is probably one of the most fulfilling things that one can do. And we 100% agree with the education aspect. I think even uh Alan is kind of also quoted as saying right from the 70s that it was less about selling your product, but more about ensuring the clients understood it. So active education and engagement with transparency and lots of communication is at the cornerstone of making sure the clients actually trust you when they need to.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Because that is the thing, is I think clients do trust financial planners, but they don't necessarily understand what they're trusting. And if you can educate them more so they are making that decision themselves.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

But yeah. Thank you so much.

Closing And How To Subscribe

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Thanks, Sam. Thanks for the light button. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, would like to subscribe, please visit our website www.growth.co.za. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.