This means challenging the status quo of what we feel is a largely outdated industry, by thinking, acting and advising in an entirely different way to the direct sales forces, brokerages and networks within the existing marketplace.
Our objective in this is to pioneer the transformation of this industry (which mostly manufactures and vends products) into a vocational, respected and life-improving profession.
We call the process by which we manage this transformation ‘positive change’ and this tagline has come to represent our organisation’s galvanising ethos.
Positive change begins with a commitment to attract, invest in and develop a different type of person into financial services. One who shares our value system and unyielding commitment to professional standards.
This approach ensures our people can independently represent the best interest of our clients instead of the numerous product and fund manufacturers. This tends to substantially lower the client’s totals costs and improve the median returns they experience – thereby allowing for a much great focus on ‘real’ financial planning over product sales.
These changes may sound simple but the execution and balancing of such a transition has been and remains a huge challenge. Sometimes compromises get made, things go wrong, historic errors surface, technology breaks and things never ever go as quickly as we would hope.
However, we are very aware that ‘by changing nothing, nothing changes’ and it is far better to begin navigating these difficult steps than to bury our heads in the sand.
Winning Best Adviser Firm Middle East and Best Global Adviser Firm is a huge honour, and testimony to our mission for positive change through best practice.
The recognition we received has certainly re-invigorated our commitment and faith in the desperate need for positive change within our market sector.
In our view, this begins with giving away high quality, unbiased educational material because as Nelson Mandela says,”education is the most powerful weapon by which you can change the world.”
As such, we have created a large educational resource on our website and use technology to reach the widest audience possible.
Giving unbiased information away free of charge challenges convention within our marketplace, but every other part of our business also deliberately embraces an antonym to the norm:
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