London-based Chartered Financial Planning firm Partners Wealth Management (PWM) has recruited six new partners, including three Chartered Financial Planners.

The expanding firm, based in the City, has attracted the new partners over the past six months.

The firm says the challenges of Covid-19 have failed to hold back the company from growing.

The new members of the firm are:

• Kat Smilewicz – a Chartered Financial Planner who joins from Tilney. She previously worked for Investors, a private hedge fund in Poland.
• Harjinder Bhatti – a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Securities & Investment with over 18 years of City and financial advice experience at BNP Paribas Wealth Management and UBS Wealth Management.
• Georgi Bennett – a Chartered Financial Planner, who joins from Skerritt Consultants after beginning her career in the City in life assurance and private equity.
• Tom Fitzgerald O’Connor – with 20 years’ experience in wealth management, he joins from Bellecapital, prior to which he was a senior private banker at Weatherbys Bank.
• Mark Priestley – who has had a financial services career spanning 30 years, largely in private banking at Coutts and Barclays Wealth Management.
• Simon Duncan – a Chartered Financial Planner with 25 years’ experience who is also a qualified Chartered Surveyor, he was previously at Close Brothers.

James Roberts, managing partner, said: “Lockdown has caused dislocation in the adviser market. Many top-end financial advisers are questioning whether the organisations they work for provide the level of proposition flexibility they seek to best service their clients and fulfil their ambitions. 

“As a partnership combining scale with a commitment to investment independence, we are excited to be the home for advisers of this level.”

Partners Wealth Management is a Chartered firm providing leading whole-of-market investment solutions. It has a team of 90 plus people with approximately 2,000 clients, and over £2 billion of client assets under management.

The firm’s early clients were mainly partners in legal and accountancy firms. Clients today also include barristers, entrepreneurs, trustees, executives, divorcees and retirees.