Thank You
Many thanks to those who were able to attend an evening reception in May and thank you to the Great Hospital for allowing us the privilege of using such an amazing space for our event.
After numerous requests, I have decided to publish my speech from the evening for those not in attendance.
It is no secret that our industry has undergone many changes in the last few years, and continue to do so. These changes are improving the reputation of the profession and the standards offered to its clients.
We too have undergone our own changes. Many of you kindly attended the launch event of our new brand in 2013 - to one that better reflected who we are and the message we wanted to project.
It is hugely important that change happens, that we are able to constantly adapt to these changes. None more true than our own life experiences and a key part of our role is ensuring your ability to continue in the event of (sometimes disastrous) events, or perhaps simply working together with your other professional advisers to ensure that as much of your wealth is passed to your loved ones, rather than the tax man.
Charles Darwin has been attributed with the words:
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change".
Now whether or not Charles Darwin did actually say this, we will never know, but nevertheless, it is very relevant to the fast paced changing world of today.
As the profession and world around us changes, so do the needs of our clients. The single most important factor is having a culture that is adaptable and client centric.
So what do I mean by this? Well it means at the core of our values, the client always comes first and this is the philosophy we all adopt at Nurture Financial Planning.
We have done this by identifying and working to our staff's key strengths, and listening to what our clients value most - our time.
This has helped us to build robust systems and processes offering clients true value. In fact we are quite proud of our achievements so far, including recently winning Holistic Financial Planning Firm - UK awarded by the Alternative Investment Awards.
As financial planners, we not only recognise our strengths but our weaknesses too, bringing in experts where necessary. Working together for the good of the client. Our assistance extends from the client to their other professional advisers, be that facilitating the sharing of sensitive data to smoothing the overall experience, or providing training and industry updates where desired.
Aside from our main business, we are all too aware that success can so easily be taken for granted, and so take our corporate responsibility very seriously.
For those who know us well, this translates to commitments to charity projects, career developments of young both internally and externally. I myself, have slept rough in a doorway to highlight the needs of those less fortunate and provided mentoring to students at the Business School here in Norwich.
It is with this commitment to our young (and what we consider to be our future), we introduced three years ago our Young Entrepreneur Grant. A competition open to 16-25 year olds offering them £1,000 and ongoing business mentoring to help them start up their own business. We are all familiar with local politics highlighting the issue with our young and how the lack of work experience impedes their chances of employment. So one solution - support and, excuse the pun, nurture them to build their own businesses. Let them control their own destiny.
In an ever changing environment, both us and the profession, you have all, in small or large part, offered your continual support. Be that as a client, a professional introducer or perhaps as simply a sounding board for ideas we may have or technical queries.
So thank you... thank you for helping us to help you. Thank you for your commitment to Nurture Financial Planning in the past, present and hopefully what we feel is going to be a very successful future.
Simon Linstead DipFA MIFS - Managing Director