Wealth & Finance International - Wealth & Money Management Awards 2016

Wealth & Money Management Awards 2016 38 Group IFA Best Bespoke Financial Planning Firm 2016 - UK Group IFA provides specialist wealth management advice to clients and employee benefits services to the businesses that they run. Company: Group IFA Website: http://groupifa.co.uk/ The group operates through a number of brands that sit under the Group IFA umbrella and it targets high net worth clients and particularly entrepreneurs. It supports the changing needs of these individuals and their companies from start-up to exit sale. The brand that provides the specialist wealth management advice is Rosebridge. A second trading brand, Sovereign, provides advice on setting up and running workplace employee benefits schemes. The Pensions Partnership specialises in trustee and administration ser- vices for both Small Self-Administered Schemes (SSASs) and Self-Invest- ed Personal Pensions (SIPPs). Also within the Group is ProSport Wealth Management, providing spe- cialist advice to professional sportspeople, mainly footballers. Since 2010 ProSport has been an official partner of the Professional Footballers Association. The specialist expertise housed in each of these brands means that Group IFA provides clients with in-depth retirement planning advice at every stage of both their accumulation and decumulation journey. Cash flow forecasting sits at the centre of Group IFA’s approach to retirement planning for its clients. Cash flow forecasting demands that clients think about each general area of spending. It is then possible to drill down into these areas and consider all of the individual lines of their personal expenditure. This detailed approach creates an accurate pic- ture of a client’s spending habits and makes it possible to then analyse how it will change in later years. In the future, for example, there may be no mortgage payments but higher travel expenses. Group IFA achieved chartered status in 2007, underlining the focus it puts on professionalism. Since 2010, Group IFA founder Phil Rose has held the ISO 22222 accreditation continuously, a standard that demands technical excellence, ethical behaviour, transparency and efficiency in financial planning. The firm encourages all members of staff to take professional exams and pays the associated exam fees. It also offers staff days off to study and days off in lieu of those spent sitting exams. By the end of the year Group IFA expects to have 60 employees, up from 28 in 2013. Over the same time frame client numbers have risen from 2,000 to a forecast of 3,000 and the percentage of those that are active has risen from 82% to 90%. Total income has jumped from £2.4m and will hit £5m by the end of the year, and funds under advice will have doubled from £419m to £800m. The percentage of recurring income has risen from 78% to a projected figure of 85% for 2016. Group IFA has a can-do attitude and differentiates itself by finding solu- tions for clients. Clients want a way to overcome a problem, not a list of reasons why something can’t be done and finding those solutions is what drives Group IFA. WM16006