There is more consolidation afoot in the UK's wealth management industry.

Tilney Bestinvest, the UK wealth manager born out of a merger in 2014, has made its own foray into the M&A arena by acquiring Ingenious Asset Management, a business overseeing more than £1.8 billion ($2.61 billion) of assets. Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Ingenious Asset Management has 41 staff in London. The transaction is expected to complete in April, subject to approval from regulators, Tilney Bestinvest said.

Such a deal is an example of the kind of merger and acquisition activity that has been a feature of wealth management in the UK recently, as regulatory pressures, demand for scale and costs of technology have pushed firms together. Tilney merged with Bestinvest in 2014 and the new entity is owned by Permira, the private equity house. In other examples, in early 2015 Old Mutual Wealth acquired UK-based Quilter Cheviot, while Schroders has bought Cazenove Capital.

The Tilney Bestinvest/Ingenious acquisition means the enlarged group will be responsible for running £11.2 billion of assets.

Since the acquisition of Bestinvest by Permira in 2014, the business will have more than doubled its assets under management from £5 billion and have more than 500 staff across the UK, operating from 15 offices.

As part of the changes, Guy Bowles, chief executive of Ingenious Asset Management, will become head of investment management (London) for Tilney Bestinvest. David Rosier, chairman of Thurleigh Investment Managers (which was purchased by Ingenious in 2014), will become a senior advisor to Tilney Bestinvest Group. 

“In Tilney Bestinvest we have found a firm which very much shares that approach and has a similar investment process to our own, with a strong emphasis on proprietary investment research. Tilney Bestinvest is also investing heavily in systems and has an excellent infrastructure to support and grow a modern investment management business,” Bowles said.