In 1987, Karel Jacobs joined Richard Allen at a well-known financial brokerage in the City – both grew aspirations to build a business that genuinely placed the client at its centre, with their goals and objectives always the priority.
Fast-forward to 2001 and Karel and Richard rented an office on the 5th floor in Dover Street, London and started together with an assistant each with an aim to build a business different from the norm: financial advice and investment didn’t need to be laden with jargon, over-complicated theories or rigid thinking.
And that approach has been tried and tested since 2001: our clients’ investment portfolios have a track record dating back to 2001 and we have back-tested our investment strategies to 1990.
One of the earliest challenges was to give the company a name.
Over a number of bottles of wine in the local wine bar, and many rejected names (Jacobs & Allen sounded like a dodgy folk duo!), it was decided to have one word each:
Richard being an ex-jockey chose ‘Canter’ and Karel being Dutch chose ‘Holland’. So Canter Holland was born in 2001 – but it sounded like a name that had been around for generations.