Financial Planner Life Podcast

Towards the end of her ten years in law, Imogen worked out that fifteen hour days for three and a half months would get her to the billable hours she needed for her bonus. She did it, hit the number, and then handed in her notice. Sam Oakes speaks to Imogen Winfield, Paraplanner and soon to be qualified financial planner at City Gate Financial Planning, about the five month career break that became a complete change of profession. Imogen spent a decade at a US law firm, ...

After 13 years inside a financial advice network, Wayne Griffith and One Financial Solutions have become directly authorised by the FCA. But what does it really take to become a directly authorised financial advice firm? How long does FCA authorisation take, what are the risks, and when is the right time to leave a network? Wayne joins Sam Oakes on the Financial Planner Life Podcast to share the full story behind One Financial Solutions becoming directly authorised. The process took around 18...

Think about it like Netflix, but for CPD. That's how David Tait, of Redmill Advance, describes the platform he's built for financial advisers, back on this week’s episode to talk through it. Rather than static articles followed by a handful of multiple-choice questions, the platform's content is genuinely interactive: cards to flip, embedded videos you have to engage with, and many tests to work through along the way, specifically so advisers actually retain what they've studied rather ...

Lewis Prosser has spent years myth-busting what it takes to go chartered. He is joined this week by David Tait of Redmill Advance. Lewis runs the St. James's Place programme supporting advisers from Level 4 through to Chartered status, and one of the most common myths he encounters is the assumption that becoming a Chartered Financial Adviser requires five years of experience, specifically as a financial adviser. Interestingly, Lewis has never advised a client himself, yet he’s ch...

Natalie Cheesman, Partner at St. James's Place, joins Sam Oakes to talk about how she built a financial planning practice to £6 million in funds under management in 18 months, without ever fully stepping away from the mortgage business she'd run for 15 years. In this episode, Natalie explains why a transactional mortgage career, however loyal her 1,200-client bank was, left her wanting something more predictable, and what it actually took to build financial planning on top of it rather than i...

Dan Armitage (CEO of Neuro Sparks) and David Tait (Founder of Redmill Advance,) joins Sam Oakes to talk about supporting neurodivergent individuals in financial planning. Dan spent a decade as a regulated financial adviser, as well as a bank manager in his early twenties, before founding Neuro Sparks with his mother three years ago. He lives with ADHD, dyslexia and dyscalculia himself, and that experience now shapes every part of how he trains other financial planners. In this conversation, D...