“All the better to eat you with my dear!” … as the financial intermediary said to Little Red Riding Hood. How much longer do we have to put up with this charade? This pretence, that everyone is who they say they are. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like … Continue reading “My, what big teeth you have financial adviser!” →

You may well ask, “Why would an IFA join this chap, instead of just setting up another company to do the FP work?” Here’s why. Many a financial adviser has discussed over a beer, at some time or other, going non-regulated with their financial planning business. Fed up with all the red-tape and asking, “Can … Continue reading Financial Planning Transplant: How To Lift and Drop FP Into A Non-Reg FP Business →

In 2005, I was the Business Development Director of the UK's fourth largest IFA Network, Berkeley Independent Advisers. Fifteen years on, I am the founding director of a new type of IFA Network. Where the advisers are so independent of product providers, they don't even hold agency agreements. A wall between advice and product. Now, … Continue reading AoLP: A New Adviser Network For Non-Intermediating Financial Planners →

The GAME Plan connects you with mind, body, heart, and spirit. The base line you aim for is enough in these four areas: a healthy equilibrium, a comfortable and balanced level of health and wellbeing. Illness in one area needs to be healed before we form solid ground on which to build to be all … Continue reading The GAME Plan: Four Capitals Detox →

Virtual non-intermediating financial planning (NIFP) is a model for our times. Steve Conley, founding organiser of the Non-intermediating Financial Planning Network and founding CEO of the Academy of Life Planning explains why. "This a first-class idea and much needed by all those people who have been left behind by previous changes to financial advice provision … Continue reading The Trendy Advice Model that’s FIVE-times more profitable! →

As coronavirus causes swathes of the population to go into long-term isolation, how can a business based on conversation, questioning and listening stay active? One life planner has made the jump already. By Steve Conley 20 Mar, 2020 ‘Imagine if you or your loved ones were diagnosed with a deadly flu strain?’ This is actually … Continue reading How I digitised a life planning proposition →

What helped me to become one of the financial services industry’s top proposition architects for over a decade (2000 to 2012) was Stephen R. Covey’s HABIT 4: WIN-WIN published in 1989. Win-win is a leadership theory about human interaction, there are six interaction paradigms; namely, win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose, win, win-win, and no deal. Win-win is … Continue reading The Perfect Storm: Thoughts on Interpersonal Leadership →

The Financial Conduct Authority refer to advice-sellers and non-advice sellers, as they focus on financial intermediation and product providers. There’s a new breed of adviser emerging, as financial capability levels rise through information sharing, the dangers of absence of walls between advice and product become more apparent and greater regulation applies cost pressures on the … Continue reading Regulation and the non-regulated adviser: How they operate and how to become one →

When all you are looking for is the best advice or best outcome for your finances. Investors face ‘wild west’ in hunt for independent advice, is the conclusion of Telegraph Money 22/02/20; As lead generators that advertise on Google against such terms as “find an independent financial adviser” pass the details on to restricted advisers, … Continue reading Google: the “Wild West” of Independent Advice →