Articles
The Power of Influence and the Art of Giving Advice
Social media presents exciting opportunities for financial advisers to take inspiration from influencers’ playbooks.
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Something’s Gotta Give
Every day, financial planners are working with clients to help them resolve their own three-constraint problems.
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A sip of wisdom: how wine making and financial planning are more alike than you think
Whether you are into wine or financial planning, success in either field requires a deep commitment to ongoing learning and development.
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The Power of Comprehensive Client Information
Discovering what clients may not readily disclose allows us to craft more accurate, relevant, and effective financial plans.
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The most important skill in Financial Planning
Is it to do with cashflow modelling? Tax planning or building an amazing investment portfolio? I’d argue that it’s curiosity.
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How can you plan unless you know what you are planning for?
The importance of stablishing objectives is a basic principle of financial planning and is now more paramount than ever before.
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Navigating a whiteout
If you are going to venture into an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous environment, go along with someone who knows what they’re doing
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Marketing your business: upping your marketing game
Your financial planning business is going well, and the time has come to take your marketing activity to the next level.
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“This is your captain speaking …”
To be effective you need to be able to apply that knowledge to your client’s unique situation. The more you can tailor your messaging by building upon what is familiar to them, the more successful you can be.
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The difference between vision and strategy and why it matters
So, as you enjoy some well-earned time off, close your eyes and imagine… if you were walking into your business in five years, what are you experiencing? What clients are you serving?
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Getting financial planning clients: The fact that gets overlooked
Most advice on how to find financial planning clients is prescriptive. It tells you what to do or where to look. Yet how helpful is this?
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The most important client meeting
Throughout a lifetime relationship, a planner might have many interactions with their clients. Still, I would argue that the review meeting stakes the claim as the most important.
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The secret to keeping your financial planning clients for life
Creating happy, enthusiastic, loyal financial planning clients for life requires you to do one thing well, and consistently. So, what is that one thing?
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What I Have Learned Since Finding My Niche
Niche means we receive far more enquiries from professional connections, friends, social media and internet searches amongst others.
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Bringing the Next Generation Into Our Profession
How can we bridge the gap between all the companies searching for talent and all the next generation talent desperate to find a career?
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It’s Critical We Attract New Talent Into Financial Planning
We must address the demographic imbalance created through decades of a lack of focus in nurturing new financial planning talent.
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Why Succession Planning is Important to Me
We discuss our clients’ goals way before retirement, we should also do it for ourselves. Here is my 10-year succession plan.
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Building Your Brand – My Journey
Niching and specialising in divorce was the best thing I ever did and the business has grown significantly ever since. Although at first it was very daunting.
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What It Means to Tell a Good Story About Your Business
You don’t just tell your brand story through websites, brochures and advertisements. It’s done through the spoken word too. Aim to do justice to your brand every time you open your mouth.
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Building Deeper Financial Advisory Relationships with Women
Dimensional introduced its Women and Wealth community in 2015 in response to the growing interest in this subject from advisors across the globe. We started by asking a simple question: are the financial planning needs of women different?
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The Practice Manager – Why You Need One
Owners of financial planning firms often approach me when considering hiring a Practice Manager for their firm. Over the years, I notice that those hiring for this role for the first time tend to grapple with the same questions …
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The Six Steps to Selling Your Financial Planning Business
There are things about your business that you don’t know, challenges that lie ahead you cannot foresee. If you are serious about one day selling, you need to start now.
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I Used To Dream About Being a Farmer, How Did I Discover Financial Planning?
For me, school was tough! If you told me then that I would be dedicating to a life-long career of learning and pursuit of qualifications, I would have run a mile. But this is the thing about the profession, you do exams because you want to.
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Content Marketing
Despite having found his way to success largely by accident, Pete Matthew describes himself as “living proof” that creating content online can lead to great things. Increased turnover, enhanced professional standing and, he believes, it will make you a better adviser.
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I Love the First Meeting with a Potential Client
I get to meet someone new and find about who they really are; where they are now and what their dreams and aspirations are for the future. I find the stories of other people inspirational. If we can help them live a bigger future going forward, that’s very exciting
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Speak in Your Ideal Client’s Language
Once you have established your niche and your ideal client, then you need to speak their language, and capture their attention.
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The Move to a Full Financial Planning World
For many reasons my recent move from an investment focused role to a full financial planning one was quite simply the biggest decision of my career. I wanted to add more value to clients’ lives rather than just measuring financial returns.
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Financial Changemakers – Talking Gender With Anna Sofat
Our second episode looks at the importance of gender diversity and inclusion in the financial services profession. Our guest Anna Sofat doesn’t hold back.
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The Soul Millionaire Journey is Born
The Flight of The Soul Millionaire, Chapter 3. A framework emerges that creates empowered people. What’s more surprising is that the same framework improves how leaders behave, how teams excel and how revenue increases.
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The Importance of Culture
I’m sure like many, a mix of office and home working will become the reality, more so than before. Indeed, in our London office, we now have team members based in South Wales and North West England – they will likely only be in the office a couple of days every other week.
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10 Things Every Website needs
In a remote-first world, your website is your real estate, it’s your shopfront, your receptionist, your billboard. The only visible presence you have.
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Financial Changemakers – Starting the Conversation About Diversity and Inclusion
Why I’ve launched the Financial Changemakers’ Podcast with Olivia Parnell. Our first episode is with guests Rohan Sivajoti of NextGen Planners and Amira Norris of Nucleus.
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You Have a Story. And You’re The Hero
The Flight of The Soul Millionaire, Chapter 2. Now you discover the ageless model, which underpins almost every story of ordinary folk who embark upon extraordinary journeys …
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From Physics to Financial Planning
Growing up, I didn’t have the classic princess stories or anything like that, I had books about the planets and stars. For my 11th birthday I was taken to toys r us and told I could pick anything I liked, and I picked a telescope.
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The Next Generation of Planners
The story about how I ended up in Financial Planning is probably similar to most people in the profession: I got there by accident.
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Professional Squash to Professional Services: My Career Change to Financial Planning
A younger version of myself wouldn’t have had the confidence for a planning role nor the maturity or empathy to understand a clients financial worries and fears.
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You’re About to See What Transformation Looks Like
Chapter 1. The journey to greater impact – to doing great work – requires transformational thinking and behaviour.
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Using real life client scenarios is a powerful training strategy
When I was asked to mentor three future financial planners, I initially found the prospect quite daunting. How would I inspire them?
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Verbal PR – how to win clients through storytelling
This article is a follow up to the webinar – How To Win Clients Through Verbal Storytelling.
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How Do You Build a Niche?
About five years ago, David Scarlett asked me who I liked working with best and who I felt I did the best job for. I had absolutely no answer for him.
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Why is Marketing a Dirty Word in Financial Advice?
A successful financial adviser shouldn’t need to market themselves. They should be busy enough with Client Referrals. Or so I had been told.
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How to Ask Great Questions
The lesson here is clear: when asking questions, first aim for the heart, as this leads you on a pathway to the soul.
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Clients Request More Information About Staying Safe Online
When asked, clients most wanted to know more about staying safe online rather than market updates or investment.
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The Power of the Back Office
To insource or to outsource is the most important decision to make. This is the efficient beating heart of your firm now and in the future.
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Discover the Power of Independent Thinking
Eight years ago, I was frazzled. I was the person with the answers. I had little time or space to breathe, let alone think!
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There is no end of content to help you become a better Financial Planner
Once I found content that resonated with me, I invested significant time and sometimes money to move forward.
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Learnings from juggling busy roles
The Power of Financial Planning is something I feel really passionate about: seeing clients journey from that initial meeting to designing the life that they’ve always wanted.
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The Power of Paraplanning
Paraplanning is definitely now more mainstream but with no specific qualification requirements nor a definitive job description, many tasks can fall under this title.
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Taking control of your ongoing reviews
Customer reviews can creep up on you, with dozens needing completion in a matter of days. As a financial adviser, you have a contractual requirement to provide a full financial review to your client.
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Fixing Problems or Enhancing Lives. Where would you rather be?
Shadowing two great financial planners allowed me to see first-hand the key to providing great outcomes is great conversations with clients.
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How Being Chartered is Just the Beginning, Not the End
A list of ‘nevers’, achieving Chartered Financial Planner status, a year by myself, giving birth and why I created my own online ‘village’ community. It’s coming up to a year that I’ve worked entirely alone.
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Producing a Virtual Event for Clients
Ruth Sturkey shares Paradigm Norton’s experience of planning and producing a virtual event for clients. Having all things backed up is key.
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Three Ways to Market and Promote Cashflow
When you’ve seen the benefits of a lifetime cashflow model first hand, it’s a lightbulb moment that immediately convinces you of its power.
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Reap the Rewards of Cashflow Modelling
Cashflow modelling demonstrates the value you add to a client and you can stress test market movement on a client’s longterm financial plan.
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Opportunities to Keep Engaging
An annual client Review Meeting acts as our formal client touch point each year to review what has happened and what changes need to be made to inform the future.
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Slowly but Surely does it
Much has been written about the first meeting with a prospective client. What happens when the prospect decides to proceed?
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The Power of Process
Systemise 90% of what you do ensuring that you have the time to customise the remaining 10% that truly matters.
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Life as a Young Financial Adviser
Authenticity is the most important thing of all. Showing up as yourself, doing the very best job you can do, is a quality we can all respect at any stage of life.
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The Value of Financial Planning in Removing Mental Barriers
Understand and accept that money is not the end-game, but a mere medium used to ultimately help clients and loved ones towards a better quality of life.
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Those with Less Assets Can Actually Have More to Gain
Clare Farrell, managing director at Northfield Wealth talks to Natalie Holt about building a business to give advice and support to as many people as possible.
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Shift Your Mindset from the Constraints of Today
Replace ‘Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics’ with ‘Purpose’.
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Tools and Apps Financial Advisers Can’t Live Without
It goes without saying that we’re all now more dependent on digital technologies than ever.
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Rethink Your Leadership to Thrive in The ‘New Normal’
It’s time to rethink your leadership style; not just yours but the leadership you need to develop and nurture in your team.
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Make Your Goal Setting More Successful
How being more aware of your values and less focused on the goal itself can just create a far better life.
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Launch Your Own Podcast and Reap the Rewards
Lockdown life appears to have spawned a plethora of podcasts. As a tactic for creating a pillar piece of content, raising your profile in the local community, and expanding your network of professional connections, podcasting has relatively few equals.
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Using Lockdown to Maximum Business Effect
Nick Platt, managing director at Henwood Court Financial Planning talks to Natalie Holt about the opportunities offered by remote working.
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Video Meetings Just Changed Your World
Respected journalist, the publisher of Inside Information and the godfather of US Financial Planning, Bob Veres, wrote about four years ago that the biggest disruptor in financial services might just be video conferencing technology.
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Financial Wellbeing in the Workplace: Links to Resources
Here are links to the resources provided by Jason Butler, The Wealthman in his POWER Webinar on Financial Wellbeing in the Workplace.
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Where the Behavioural meets Financial Planning
It’s at times like this, in COVID-19 Age, when financial wellbeing and resilience become increasingly important. This is Natalie Holt in conversation with Hayley Tink, Smith & Pinching.
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Using Principles of Financial Wellbeing to Interact with Clients
We are in unprecedented times. Your clients want to hear from you more than ever and not necessarily about their investments.
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A New Entry into the Financial Lexicon: ‘Financial Wellbeing’
I confess, when I started to write this article, I wondered whether ‘financial wellbeing’ was just some new buzz phrase or a phrase worth using.
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Top 10 tips in times of market chaos
Learnings from over a decade of working with Financial Planners and talking to their clients. Some thoughts for coaching clients and deeper client conversations.
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The Meaning of Financial Wellbeing
The term ‘Financial Wellbeing’ is very subjective and can be defined differently by each person who uses it. The new Initiative of Financial Wellbeing has defined it as “the study and application of how money can make us happy” and I support that, but ‘well-being’ is derived from other things too.
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Top 10 Tips for Using a Financial Coaching Approach
Here are Jan Bowen-Nielsen and Chris Budd’s top 10 tips for using a coaching approach to increase client engagement.
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Coaching books for Financial Planners
In the questions and comments raised by some of the 2,000 or so people attending the two PFS Power webinars with Chris Budd and Jan Bowen-Nielsen, there were quite a few requests for us to recommend books about coaching.
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Great Coaching Questions
During the PFS Power Coaching Webinars that Jan Bowen-Nielsen and I conducted on 28 January 2020, several people asked, “Can you suggest some great questions?” Here are a few thoughts.
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Financial Planning Meeting – First Contact, First Meeting
Since discovering Lifestyle Financial Planning, Tamsin Caine has believed in it. It didn’t make it any easier to master. She is sure lots of other Financial Planners feel the same.
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Clients & the Power of Love
If you don’t feel the love for your clients, why work with them? By Gemma Siddle.
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Embracing new technology
Technology will be transformational in making Financial Planning more accessible than ever before. By Anthony Villis.
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Job Satisfaction, Wellbeing & Genuine Joy
To be certain your business is futureproof, you have to predict the future and put plans in place to meet the demands put upon you indefinitely. By Julie Lord.
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Piercing the Surface
Developing a Financial Planning proposition can seem like a huge undertaking. But if your focus is already on achieving good outcomes for clients, you have the core foundations already in place. By Natalie Wright.
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Bringing Money to Life
Our aim with the the PFS POWER Initiative is to empower and equip our readers to change people’s lives through Financial Planning. For many this means a change in mindset from transactional advice to a more comprehensive, life-focused service. By Ruth Sturkey.
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Let’s pretend you are not here
Kevin Deamer makes a point of rehearsing what happens when the time comes for Executors to complete all the necessary paperwork.
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The best service you can give
Aligning yourself with your clients’ best interests is paramount in the provision of the best service you can give. When a desire to help people comes first, the money will follow if you always do the right thing, says Michael Freedman.
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Focus on what you can control
Structuring a Financial Planning business can be difficult. Applying some investment principles can paint an interesting picture. By Duncan Parkes.
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Use of coaching
Having recently undertaken a business coaching certification, Alasdair Walker found one of the benefits was an opportunity to reflect on his interaction with clients, particularly in the first meeting. Alasdair talks about a resulting change of approach mixing coaching skills with fact find.
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Person before problem
Who is talking? Asks Jan Bowen-Nielsen. Have you been in client meetings and found yourself doing most of the talking? You might be keen to share product knowledge, to show your expertise, or you may just want to be liked and to build rapport.
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Types of Coaching
In financial advice, two types of coaching have been rising in prominence over recent years: ‘pure’ coaching, and financial coaching. Although they share a name, there are differences. Chris Budd explains.
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The Power of Niche
Around five years ago, Adam Carolan noticed a trend in his business: an ageing client base dying or losing capacity and a struggle to engage with the Next Generation.
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Deepening Relationships
Retirement planning is a core function of the Financial Planning profession. Amyr Rocha-Lima discusses why our job is not just to help clients accumulate resources but to help them as their coach and cheerleader as another life stage begins.
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Annual Planning Meetings
You’ve taken on a new client, given them a great initial Financial Planning experience, followed up with an Annual Planning Meeting and are wondering what now? By Garry Hale.
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Draft Planning Meeting
Often meeting number two, the ‘draft’ planning meeting is another time to shine. It’s when life and money come together to show what’s possible.
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The Power of Emotion
Clients tend to seek advice when big life events come along: selling a business, stopping work, a new business, birth of a child, a new house, ill health, divorce. It’s no surprise that people often have heightened emotions that affect their decisions. Anthony Villis explains.
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Purposeful Preparation
Prior to a first meeting, setting the right expectations in clients’ minds is vital.
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The Client Experience is more than a Six Step Process
Broadly speaking, six steps are considered to form the foundation of a Financial Planning process used with clients.
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Positioning
What a Financial Planner does and two client stories that illustrate the value of what Financial Planning can achieve.
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Client advisory groups
For Matrix Capital, the idea of establishing a Client Advisory Group emerged from a review undertaken of the business in 2008; about the time of the announcement of the Retail Distribution Review.
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Financial Planning – Definition and Purpose
The whole Financial Planning process has made me think about what I really want to do. It has helped me confront myself about what I earn, what I spend and what’s left over.
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The Stethoscope and the Importance of Coaching
The stethoscope was a great leap forward for medicine. Find out how the story of it shines a light on Financial Planning.
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The Power to Change Lives
Anthony Villis talks about adopting a Lifestyle Financial Planning approach in 2014, and his firm, First Wealth, hasn’t looked back. “It’s brought energy to our business and helped change people’s lives in a positive way.”
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Client Meetings
The number of client meetings and time taken differs from firm to firm as they adapt a Financial Planning process that works for them. By Carrie Bendall.
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Discovery and Planning
Learn about how to structure pre-appointment letters discovery meetings and planning meetings, and the optimum content.
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Marketing
We now have so many marketing tools, techniques and channels at our disposal, how do we know which to use?
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The Client Experience
There are two sides to the client experience: the actual process clients go through and the outcomes clients receive. Whilst the outcomes of Financial Planning are positive, the Financial Planning process can be initially daunting.
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Lifetime Cash Flow Modelling
Most Financial Planners put lifetime cash flow modelling at the heart of what they do. It’s essential to their work and the advice they give their clients.
Not everyone agrees though this may be because there is still some mystique about what cash flow modelling is. This section explains what cash flow modelling is, the benefits of using it with clients, as well as the drawbacks.
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Financial Planning Process
Many people focus on making money rather than discovering how much they actually need during the course of their lifetime. Imagine how you would feel if you knew you had enough money, not just to do the things you want, but to help others too.
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What it Takes to be a Good Financial Planner
“The job of a planner is 95% people skills and 5% technical skills, but you need to know 100% of the 5% technical”. Here are Ten Qualities.
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(Why) Don’t all Financial Advisers do it this Way?
Like many people I came to financial advice in mid-life, arguably far too late.
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