Healix Health Services has bought Halcyon Trustees to add the range of healthcare trust consultancy services to its proposition.
The move comes less than seven months after Halcyon was co-founded by John Dean and Elliott Hurst with the aim of improving governance standards and beneficiary outcomes for employers and their members.
Managing director Dean (pictured) will be joining Healix Health Services as part of the transaction, the value of which has not been disclosed.
The firm offers independent advice, support and training to companies and experts in the sector, including employers, trustees, trust administrators, insurers and independent advisers.
At its launch Halcyon warned many people acting as trustees were not aware of their full responsibilities and that the lack of regulation meant it was open to more risk than pension trustees.
The firm later called for regulation of the sector to be introduced to address the “increasingly poor” standards of governance and trusteeship it had witnessed at many UK healthcare trusts.
From September healthcare trustees have been required to register with HMRC’s trustee registration service (TRS) or risk being held personally liable.
Healix Health Services CEO Ian Talbot noted that Halcyon Trustees had been instrumental in highlighting the importance of trust governance in the marketplace.
“Providing the best possible service to our clients is always our number one priority and the acquisition will be a huge part of that as we look to develop our proposition further in 2023,” he said.
“John brings a wealth of knowledge and diverse market experience with him and we’re looking forward to working together to further develop our services to support employers, trustees and independent advisers.”
Halcyon Trustees managing director John Dean added that he was pleased with the deal.
“Our trust governance expertise combined with Healix’s position as the healthcare trust experts will enable us to build even stronger trust propositions and support further growth of Healix services,” he said.
“We are looking forward to working with Ian and the Healix team and being a part of the ongoing growth and success of the business.”
