Each month Financial Planner interviews a leading Financial Planner to ask him or her to share best practice from their business and the story of how they and their colleagues built their company. This issue we speak to Jason McGuigan CFP^CM of Critchleys Financial Planning.
Financial Planner: Congratulations on becoming an Accredited Financial Planning Firm^TM, why did you decide to apply for the register?
Jason McGuigan: With RDR coming in and the focus on raising standards, we wanted to show that we are part of an elite group of professionals who are passionate about Financial Planning.
While initially, I thought the benefits of accreditation would be all about recognition and brand awareness, I never appreciated how much value I would receive from actually going through the application process itself. The feedback was really beneficial for us.

FP: What do you hope the accreditation will bring to the firm and are you getting involved with the IFP's Great Minds Think Alike campaign?
JM: Well apart from the branding and recognition, I am looking forward to sharing best practice with other Accredited firms on the register. The "Great Minds Think Alike" campaign is all about helping the public to understand what good Financial Planning is all about and I wholeheartedly support these aims.

FP: How did you first get into Financial Planning and what attracted you to the profession?
JM: Well perhaps like many people, I fell into financial services in the late 80s after leaving school at 16. Working in a shop in 1988, a friend came into the shop and said that he now worked as a financial adviser for life insurer General Portfolio and that he could get me an interview. I went along and got the job – little did I know, I had been signed up to work as a self-employed commission-only life assurance salesman!

FP: Your firm is part of the larger Critchleys accountancy firm. How did the Financial Planning arm come about and how were you involved?
JM: During my nine years in direct sales prior to joining Critchleys, I had always strived to be seen as a professional and I passed my AFPC (now Level 4) qualifications in the mid 90s. This advanced knowledge lead me to seek out a role in a professional firm. In 1997, the opportunity came along to set up an IFA for Critchleys Accountants with a former colleague. Even back then, we could see that offering fee-based financial advice was the way forward but it wasn't really until we joined the IFP in the late 90s that we started to get more interested in Financial Planning as a concept and become more involved in planning and cashflow modelling.
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FP: How has your team and company changed since the launch and what has the journey been like? How many clients do you have and what's the annual turnover?
JM: Sadly my former colleague left the firm to pursue other interests in 2009 but apart from that, most of my team of eight have been with me for many years. Ian Brookes, my more senior Financial Planner, progressed through the ranks from administrator to become a CFP^CM professional and John Paul Hamilton joined us last year to become the third RI in the team. We then have five very dedicated team members who support us in varying different admin, finance and Paraplanner roles.
In 2011, we also acquired another Financial Planning firm and have spent the last two years working with the vendor to successfully migrate his client base into our service offering.
The journey has been challenging but fun and we have had a few slip-ups getting to where we are now. However, my view is that I would rather try something new and fail than not try it at all.
Our practice looks after 314 active clients, with funds under management of circa £85m and in the year to June 2012, our turnover was £724,000.

FP: What type of Financial Planning do you offer to clients and what are your fees/charges?
JM: We offer a comprehensive financial and lifestyle planning service which focuses on the client. We aim to earn the title of "trusted adviser" and help facilitate and help in all areas of their financial life. This includes co-ordinating the services of other professionals like fund managers, lawyers, tax advisers mortgage advisers and so on and we aim to be in the hub, keeping them on the right path.
We typically charge £3,000 to £5,000 for a financial plan, one per cent on implementation or consolidation and 0.75 per cent per annum for ongoing services (subject to a minimum fee).

FP: Oxford is known as a "town and gown" city with very wealthy areas and some poor areas. How does this affect your client base and do you have any academics as clients?
JM: We are lucky that Critchleys works very closely with many Oxford colleges from an audit and tax compliance side, so this allows us a foot in the door.
We act for many academics and we see these as a big source of potential work. Many high-earning academics are members of the University Superannuation scheme (USS) and they are struggling to get their heads around the lower pension annual allowance limits and the tax problems that can come about if DB pension accrual exceeds the limit. Good fee-based advice work can come from this planning area and this could lead into a full financial plan and a longer term planning client.
We are also happy to take on 'the town' as well as 'the gown' as long as, in all cases, they are the right type of client.

FP: How do you find new clients and what have been some of your best practices in terms of sourcing new clients? What works most effectively for you?
JM: Working closely with the accountants Critchleys for so long, we have been able to source many high quality client introductions. You have to be patient though and it has taken me many years to build a credible team and a credible service that my accountancy partners can feel confident in using. You need to show that the focus of Financial Planning is all about the planning, not the product, and introducing the benefits of cashflow modelling has really helped me here. So we try and get the introducer / partner involved in the client meetings where possible, especially when we are doing the cashflow modelling live on a big interactive screen with the client.
Taking on the partners as clients has also helped develop that relationship as they can then understand the whole client experience from start to finish.

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FP: In terms of running your business, what software applications do you use (particularly in reference to Financial Planning and back office software) and what sort of internal processes do you run in brief to ensure everything runs smoothly?
JM: As a business, we are very process driven. We expect that any client coming in to see us will get the same experience whoever they see. We use 1st software (Avelo) for our back office and we have built a whole load of processes and event lists into this database which staff need to follow. We use Truth for our cashflow modelling. We outsource our investment management and have just finished writing our centralised investment proposition document, which the team now use when proposing investment solutions.

FP: What has been your greatest source of achievement in running your business and what are you proudest of?
JM: Until 2012, I would have said achieving CFP^CM certification in 2005 was my biggest achievement. Although in 2012, my firm gained IFP Accredited Financial Planning Firm status and also become a Chartered Firm so these have to take the top slot. I am very proud of my team as I would not have been able to achieve these accolades without their dedication and support.

FP: Now we are in the post-RDR world, what is the next step for your business and do you think RDR has changed anything?
JM: I think we now need to let RDR bed down and get to grips with how, in reality, things will change. I do hope that the RDR will achieve the results that the FSA was seeking but I have my reservations, especially as some advisory firms have just seemed to have replaced high levels of initial and trail commission with high levels of initial and trail 'customer agreed remuneration'.
For our firm, we will continue to seek possible acquisition opportunities but only where there is a very strong cultural fit with us.
As head of Critchleys Private Client, I also continue to work on the integration of the Financial Planning arm with the main tax practice in order to offer a truly joined up one-stop-shop for clients where tax advice, Financial Planning and tax compliance all form part of one service.

FP: Many planners are concerned about the rising cost of regulation and other threats to their businesses. What do you see as the main threats?
JM: The declining advisory community is a big worry as the continuing burden and cost of regulation will be dumped onto the advisers and planners that remain.

FP: What do you like doing in your spare time outside of work?
JM: Holidays are really important so I can recharge my batteries. I enjoy snowboarding and thanks to years of ski-ing with fellow IFP members, I have improved a lot. I enjoy walking, dancing and keeping fit. I will soon be a granddad too, so my time will be taken up remembering how to change nappies!

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