Financial Planner: Well done for winning New Model Adviser of the Year 2012 for Scotland & Northern Ireland in January. What does the award mean to you?
David Crozier: For the award we had to answer questions about our business, focusing on things like financials, clients and qualifications. We were short listed, and completed an additional questionnaire about successes in 2011 and plans for 2012, and how we communicate with clients. The prize was a block of what I believe Americans call Lucite with our name on it. Oh, and the response from peers and clients, the genuine warmth of which was more pleasing than any material prize. And I trust some good PR.
FP: What inspired you to establish a Financial Planning business and to enter the profession?
DC: I became a financial adviser by accident, as many did in the days of direct sales. After a couple of years with L&G I decided I was going to make it, and that I should be an IFA. I met IFP chief executive Nick Cann the first time he came to Northern Ireland, decided I wanted to do a better job for my clients and that Financial Planning needed to be at its core. I passed my CFPCM qualification in 1999 and from then on I was looking for a way to deliver it to my clients. I was fortunate to be working with a firm that was supportive and put no barriers in my way.
The IFP Conference in 2003 was a pivotal moment for me, as I met three people who helped change my life. I sat beside Julie Lord FIFP CFPCM and Phil Taylor at the Branch Chairmen’s Dinner and they metaphorically kicked my backside about starting my own business; and not only that, but offered practical help and support. I also met John Baxter, then of True Financial Planning, now of Veracity Asset Transformation, who showed me how to make fee-based Financial Planning work, and gave me (well, he’s from Fife, so “sold” would be more accurate) the tools to make it happen. I can’t thank these three enough.
FP: When did you start the business and how has it grown since you started?
DC: The business started in 2004 and was a fee- based Financial Planning practice from outset. We started off with myself, a Paraplanner, and my wife Gail as an administrator. We now have two Financial Planners, a Paraplanner, an administrator, and Gail still does the financials. The journey was certainly not a straight line, but I can’t pretend it was all uphill either. We went from nothing in February 2004 to, within 13 months, having enough recurring revenue to pay our overheads and provide a decent income for ourselves. I’m not the most focused person in the world, as my family and colleagues will tell you, and we got distracted along the way from time to time. Right now, we have 84 clients but have plans (and the processes and segmented client propositions in place) to grow that significantly this year.
One of the best decisions I made was two years ago, when I appointed my personal assistant, Harriette. She is great at keeping me organised and doing all sorts of routine stuff that I was wasting valuable time doing myself - and she does it better!
Since Catherine Greeves joined as a planner in 2010, we have been able to approach our clients and professional connections more as a team, and the firm feels much more like a proper business now, rather than an engine to support my lifestyle.
FP: Navigator recently became an IFP Accredited Financial Planning Firm. What inspired you to seek this recognition?
DC: Come January 2013 everybody will be “qualified” and I thought the Accredited Financial Planning designation was a great opportunity to differentiate us. I knew we had the systems and processes to get close, and we really had to do very little to get over the line. We were very pleased to be among the inaugural 25 firms recognised at the 25th anniversary conference in Celtic Manor. I’m delighted that plenty of other firms have now come along, which will give the IFP a budget to promote the accreditation.
FP: What was the value to your firm in seeking Accredited Firm status and how will you make best use of it?
DC: We saw the value in differentiation from potential competitors. Right now, I believe we’re one of only two Accredited firms in NI, so this has got to give us something of an edge. We also saw it is an opportunity to benchmark Navigator against the best firms in the country, and know that what we are doing is as good as anybody in the country. And finally, we hope that we will benefit from the marketing spend by the IFP on the Accredited status, by virtue of being one of a very small number in our area. My advice to other firms thinking about Accredited status is: get on with it!
FP: What type of Financial Planning do you offer to clients and what are your fees/charges?
DC: We offer holistic Financial Planning based on a lifetime cashflow model. We feel very strongly that cashflow models are necessary to give clients the context in which to make decisions, and planners the context in which to give advice. We try to provide advice on a family basis, involving the next generation when we’re doing estate planning. It’s great for the family, because it means that there are no surprises and fewer disputes; and it’s great for us, because the relationship is already formed when the time comes for the money to move on.
We charge a fee for our initial Financial Planning and implementation, based on the time we spend, the value we add, and the regulatory risk we take. We quote everything up front, giving clients a summary of their objectives, what we are going to help them achieve them, and how they will feel when it’s all done. Our ongoing service is charged on the basis of assets under advice, and sometimes a monthly retainer, for clients who don’t yet have much in the way of assets.
FP: What sort of clients do you target and are there any distinctive aspects to working in Northern Ireland, compared to other parts of the UK?
DC: We have two, very different, client niches. We are specialists in dealing with clients who have suffered serious personal injury or medical negligence. I’ve been involved in this area since 2001, when I was asked by the local organisers of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers to help them set up a trustee company for the purpose of looking after such people. People like this really need our help, and I get a great buzz out of helping them get their lives back together as far as possible. And you meet some fantastic people, who really have taken lemons and made lemonade. My first book, to be published later this year, will be for this niche.
We also deal with entrepreneurs and owner- managers of small and medium-sized businesses. These are people who are very successful at what they do, but often have no time to enjoy their success. We offer them a Personal Chief Financial Officer service. And as for Northern Ireland? Well, we are a bit careful where we wear our Celtic shirts and our Royal Wedding bumper stickers. (That’s a joke, by the way, although there was a time when it wasn’t!) I doubt if it’s much different from anywhere else in the UK. It is a bit of a village: all the good Financial Planners know each other, but surprisingly rarely come into competition. There is an innate conservativism: it must be something to do with the Ulster-Scots Calvinist heritage - in most parts of GB, or in the USA, owning a Maserati is a sign that you must be good; here’s it’s a sign you’re charging too much!
FP: How do you find new clients?
DC: This is something we are working really hard on at the minute. Our drive over the last year or so has been to raise our profile with the legal profession, and that’s a slow process. We have been running a series of CPD seminars for solicitors, with particular emphasis on personal injury related matters. We get the content accredited by the Law Society so we are gradually getting to be the “go to” firm for personal injury financial advice among the legal profession in NI.
FP: What makes Navigator different to other Financial Planning firms?
DC: Good question: the problem is, there aren’t that many proper Financial Planning firms. The handful that I know of in NI get together informally on a regular basis, to share best practice, and I have to honestly say that I would be confident to refer clients to any one of them (and do, on a regular basis, for clients that don’t fit Navigator, for reasons of geography or proposition fit). Maybe we are a bit further down the track in having a great investment proposition or sales process, and maybe we concentrate on a market niche rather than being a general practitioner, but that’s just because we’ve been doing it longer.
FP: What back office applications do you use and what sort of internal processes do you run to ensure everything goes smoothly?
DC: We use Voyant for accumulator clients, but for everything else (back office, and cashflow modelling for decumulator clients) we use an Access database hosted in The Cloud. This has been developed over many years by my good friend and EBIS Group colleague, Martin Strutt, of Collingbourne Wealth Management. It gives us everything that we ever need in terms of collating information for factfinds, and managing client investments, and also has a great diary and contact management system.
Being a fee-based practice we don’t need commission reconciliation Harriette develops checklists for everything, which keeps us compliant. Catherine and I meet every month to review the last month in terms of progress and set objectives for the coming month. Once a quarter, we carry out a Balanced Scorecard assessment of our business, giving ourselves a score in each of six key areas. We then set our KPIs for the next quarter in the light of the goals we set for the business at the start of the year.
FP: What has been your greatest source of achievement and what tips or advice would you share with other planners?
DC: I’m fairly proud of the fact that we are still here, eight years later, thriving and growing. My greatest source of inspiration and sense of achievement has been the changes we have been able to make to the lives of our clients, and the feedback and thanks we get from them. They are wonderful and I thank them for their support.
What would I say to other planners? Be a specialist in one area and own it, rather than seeking to be all things to all men. Decide on your sales process, write it down, and stick to it. Delegate – stop trying to do it all yourself (another one I wish I had heeded myself more often).
FP: What do you see as the main threats to your business?
DC: Laziness (my own)! Regulation is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Embrace compliance in your culture and it’s not a problem. Competition? It’s not an issue, and it will be less so as RDR draws nigh. I very, very rarely come up against another planner; I more often find wealthy clients who don’t have a planner.
FP: What three things would you change about the profession?
DC: That journalists and the public would get to know that a Financial Planner is not the same thing as a financial adviser. Financial Planning would be seen as a career of choice, in the same way that accountancy or dentistry is. I would wave a wand and the public in general would trust Financial Planners, in the same way that they trust doctors and lawyers; and we would always conduct ourselves in such a way that we would earn and keep that trust.