Vanguard Group Inc. has launched a hiring spree in the U.K. to staff its personal investment business that includes a newly created financial advice unit in the country.

The U.S. asset manager has recruited more than 60 people in the past year for the personal investor division in London and is planning to hire dozens more between now and April to deal with rising client numbers, according to Sean Hagerty, head of Europe. The hires, which have so far included financial planning experts, will focus mainly on client services roles, he said. 

The $8.3 trillion asset manager, which is headquartered in Pennsylvania, is expanding internationally and disrupting the U.K. personal finance industry with an offering of low fees and do-it-yourself investing. By breaking into the advice space, the firm threatens to take market share from a network of financial advisers at firms such as Quilter Plc and St. James’s Place Plc. 

“We want to close the gap in the U.K. between people who need advice and people getting advice,” Hagerty said on a virtual call. “We grow our staff based on how many clients we are going to get.”

Hagerty said the firm is expecting the number of new clients in the new division, which consists of DIY investing products and the advice unit, will be between 180,000 to 200,000 a year. The business has almost doubled in the past year to 370,000 clients, he added.

Vanguard rolled out the advice unit last April and made it available to clients with a minimum investment of 50,000 pounds ($67,903) for an all-inclusive charge of 0.79%, according to a press release at the time. 

The plans to move into the financial advice business extends beyond British shores. In Germany, the firm will launch a similar investment service by the end of the first quarter, Hagerty said.

Many Vanguard products, including the firm’s LifeStrategy range that manages billions of pounds, are already popular with U.K. financial advisers, who use them in client portfolios because of their low fees and good returns. The LifeStrategy 60% Equity fund is one of the U.K.’s largest and manages around 14 billion pounds of client money, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

That means the latest push could put Vanguard in competition with advisers who are already recommending its products.

“We are conscious of the fact there could be channel conflict but we have found there are different investor types who value face-to-face relationships and others who don’t,” Hagerty said.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.