A Financial Planner specialising in working with health professionals has teamed up with a south-east based Financial Planning firm to nearly double its number of clients.

Richard Earl has joined forces with Cervello Financial Planning, run by Chris Daems.

Mr Earl, who has over 24 years industry experience, was an employed IFA with the British Medical Association from 1999 to 2005 and has many clients connected with the medical profession.

He provides advice to doctors, surgeons and GPs within the NHS and private practice.

Mr Earl, who also worked for Positive Solutions for 9 years, has brought over 100 active clients under the Cervello banner.

Cervello looks after 80 private clients and 33 corporate clients and specialises in working with medium sized employers to ensure they have benefits in place, which attract and retain their best people as well as helping with compliance on workplace pensions.

Mr Daems also runs the auto-enrolment focused firm AE in a Box solution, which is being used by 200 or more accountants and planners across the country.

Mr Earl said he was delighted to be working with Mr Daems, who has been a friend for many years.

He said: “We complement each other well, there’s a synergy we bring and we have the same outlook. We want to grow the business and make it stronger and we trust each other, have the same ethics and we hope it will be an extremely good basis for a relationship.”

Mr Earl said the pair look beyond simply seeking out individuals with huge wealth and “try to help as many people as we can” because “everyone needs advice”.

He said although it is a business and not a charity, the firm aims to advise those with more modest funds, stressing it was “not elitist”.

Over the next year he anticipates a lot of work will revolve around making the most of the new pension rules, as they continue to bed in.

He said: “Pensions freedoms are still on-going and we’ll also be looking out for any changes in the Autumn statement. Everyone seems to be expecting changes to higher rate tax relief, so we could have a lot of people trying to make the most of what they have at the moment.

“I have more and more enquires from people wanting to know how best to utilise their money. What can I do? Helping people avoid pitfalls of taking money in the wrong way.”

He also expects the auto-enrolment work to lead to further relationships with businesses.

He said: “I can see off the back of auto-enrolment spending time to talk to more small business, giving them a corporate MOT, with business advice, corporate protection, areas like that. I can see these being discussed more.”

Mr Daems said: “We welcome Richard to our Cervello Family and are looking forward to the future with him as part of our team.”