“The conversations I start with you today, I’ll be continuing with your children.”
Longevity in financial advice is easy to promise. What matters is whether your adviser will still be there – genuinely invested in your life – twenty or thirty years from now.
Growing up, I spent most weekends on the golf course. Even as a junior, I’d find myself listening in on conversations between the older players – talk of mortgages, pensions, retirement plans and business worries. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was absorbing exactly what I’d spend my career helping people with. Finance isn’t just what I do – it’s the language I’ve spoken all my life.
My path here wasn’t entirely straightforward. After an accounting and finance degree, I qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ACCA) and worked in a couple of very different roles along the way. One of them taught me something important: conviction matters. I once left a sales role because I no longer believed in what I was selling. That experience sharpened something in me – a determination to only ever do work I truly stand behind.
Wealth management gave me exactly what I was looking for: deep financial knowledge combined with real, lasting client relationships. The most common thing I hear from new clients is that nobody has ever asked them the right questions before.
That’s where I start. Not with products or projections, but with questions. What does a comfortable retirement actually look like for you? What are you really building towards? I’ve sat with clients who were focused on reaching a million pounds in their pension, only to realise – once we’d worked through the numbers together – they’d need far less than they thought. Good advice starts with understanding what someone actually needs, not what they assume they should want.
What genuinely sets me apart is that I have more than 30 years of my career ahead of me. When I take on a client today – whether that’s helping them plan for retirement or work through Inheritance Tax – I’m likely to be there for the rest of their financial life. I’m already having conversations with clients’ adult children, helping the next generation understand what’s coming and building the right habits early – before they’re facing important financial decisions at one of the hardest moments of their lives.
This isn’t just planning for you. It’s planning for your family.
Outside of work, golf is still a big part of my life – and there’s something fitting about the fact that the conversations I overheard on fairways as a child are now the conversations I’m helping to shape.
If you’re looking for an adviser who will grow with you, and be there for whatever comes next, I’d love to have that first conversation.
