© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
Robert Plumb, CEO of HML Holdings plc, likes to keep his property management business simple and streamlined, but always with an eye on growth and acquisition.
I started my career as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young before moving into financial services. In 2000 the company I ran was sold and I was headhunted to run a property services business called Hercules. It was the forerunner of the Erinaceous model. The management had an acquisition strategy; it simply went out and bought businesses. It had commercial estate agencies and insurance brokerages. Of the three businesses it ran, insurance was the biggest, followed by commercial property and then residential property management.
The residential management business was the smallest unit but probably the most complicated to run. Between 2000 and 2004, we went through the full range of management styles. At this time I got to know how not to manage property; it was very educational. We were always piggy in the middle; we managed tough buildings where people were often at war with their landlords because buildings were not being refurbished and residents were refusing to pay their service charge; clearly the start of a massive downward spiral. I also learnt that the quality of the accounting service underpins everything in this business.
At the end of 2004, Erinaceous acquired Hercules and I was not compatible with the management style of the Erinaceous board. After leaving Hercules I met the Chairman of LTC plc Richard Smith. LTC plc is a property development group that had started to build a residential management group. Richard and I agreed to team up, demerging the services companies and floating the newly formed group on AIM. We set out to replicate the Hercules model but this time, armed with the knowledge of previous mistakes, with a sharper strategic focus on the residential management sector.
We had tried to fit too many property services into one melting pot. HML Holdings philosophy is to focus on residential block management and not to become an insurance broker to anyone other than their clients. We have kept the business fairly neat and tidy since then and this is working for us. Service charge accounting has to be an integral part of our service offering and service charge accountants need to be close to their property managers – so the last structure we would want, for example, is to relocate our accounting services to India – that process is a zillion miles away from where our hearts are at.
Our business is relatively small, 25,000 units under management (about 1,000 buildings), and we keep the process of management simple, neat and efficient. We do not want to be owners of freeholds and we don’t want to gain new management by buying buildings, which is the strategy of some of the bigger players. Although we do manage for many landlords our focus tends to be on the owner-occupier or RMC market. If we were approached by a big professional landlord who said: ‘I’ve got 100 blocks for you to manage but I want 15% of your management fees and 50% of the insurance commission’ – this would not be for us. I am comfortable with the service we provide in terms of insurance broking and chartered surveying, because we are able to clearly demonstrate better value for money for our clients. If not, we will inform our clients and advise them to research the market themselves. I am comfortable with our overall service standards and customer-satisfaction monitoring.
The answer is yes to both of those questions. I am pleased ARMA has a code of conduct. If these codes didn’t exist then the opportunity for cowboys to enter the business would be more rife than it is, so their overall principles sit comfortably with me.
We can always improve our service levels and this is always our aim. We see ourselves growing geographically through acquisition and organic growth, rather than adding levels of service to the business. But I still think we can add new services, which fit with our overall service aim, such as health & safety consultation. The key is to grow our business as a professional management service and by selling our expertise. We do not want to start selling our own products such as security and CCTV systems. We also value all of our staff. Our property managers are fantastic and we treat them like gold dust!
W A Ellis Property Management was a fabulous acquisition. Never been happier. W A Ellis LLP is a quality, long-established estate agency, but they realised their property management unit was both complicated to run and not synergistic with their other client services. They took a long look at the market to find the right home for this business because they wanted the new owner to posses the same high values. The fact they decided on us was a huge boost for our company.
I am a family man who plays a bit of golf, but I’m not justifying the club membership dues!
1979 - qualified as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young.
1981 - joined audit client Avco Financial Services as FD.
1991 - became Managing Director of Avco Europe (a UK-regulated bank) growing the business to operate in five other European countries (Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and France).
2000 - joined Hercules Property Services (HPS) Plc as CEO. HPS was listed on the main London Stock Exchange and covered the full range of insurance and services to the residential and commercial property markets. Left HPS when it was acquired by Erinaceous in late 2004
2005 – appointed Chief Executive of HML
2006 – floated HML Holdings plc on AIM