Dentons has indicated to Sipps Professional that it is eyeing up acquisitions, as it reported completing on its 4000th Sipp.

The company, which now administers £1.84 billion in assets, reported this month that new Sipp figures rose to 491 in 2015 – an increase from 397 in 2014.

David Fox, director of sales and marketing at Dentons, said the firm is ‘acquisitive’ but had been deterred by asking prices.

He told Sipps Professional: “We didn’t do any deals last year just because of some of the prices some of the companies were going for - we weren’t prepared to go for them.”

But he added: “We always have ears to the ground on acquisitions.”

He said over 40% of last year’s new Sipps came from clients leaving other providers.

Across Denton’s Sipp book, the average case size was around £460,000 and 54% of the new cases received in this calendar year have been established to contain some form of direct commercial property investment, he revealed.

Mr Fox said: “We’re really benefiting from pensions freedoms, people are doing interesting things with pensions and becoming more aware of the bespoke nature of Sipps.

“More and more are becoming aware of bespoke Sipps and what you can do with them such as loans, commercial property and things like that.

“With pension freedoms almost one year old, property investment remains popular within both Sipps and SSASs, for family businesses and individual investors. This is in part that people feel they understand property investment and can see and feel the investment.”

While the new requirements for capital adequacy have been well publicised and debated, Dentons is more than prepared, Mr Fox said.

He said: “There aren’t any challenges we haven’t met, we exceed capital adequacy already.”

He believes there will be a gradual period of further consolidation in the Sipp sector over the net few years.

He said: “I think the regulator thinks there are too many Sipp providers and I think the cap ad rules are designed to reduce the number and by the nature of it the best ones will be left.”

The company’s annual results, published this month, also showed new business was up 12% and turnover increased to £7 million, compared to £6 million for 2014. Profits were £1.5 million - up from 1.04 million the previous year.