A Buckinghamshire-based financial advice firm has received approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to serve clients in the UK.
EQ Financial Planning is an authorised representative of 2Plan Wealth Management and will be run by former Barclays Wealth and Radcliffe & Newlands financial planner Adrian Kidd.
The firm will largely serve clients based in London and Buckinghamshire but will offer advice and life planning services to people across the UK via digital channels.
It currently serves 23 families with Kidd as the only adviser. The firm’s ambition is to serve around 40.
Life planning
Kidd told International Adviser: “EQ Financial Planning was born from a meeting I had with a life planner in early 2020.
“A life planner is someone who looks at what is important to you using a programme called Evoke. The only area of my life I was dissatisfied and disconnected from was work. I was working at a place where it felt to me the client wasn’t at the centre of everything; and that’s essential.
“There were many hundreds of clients and only four advisers; the time to do the job properly wasn’t there. It was also a case of we do things this way and you need to fit in with us. So, after being ‘life planned’, I went through the training programme and am now one of 600 people globally who are trained registered life planners.
“I am also taking a financial coaching course with Catherine Morgan and will qualify early next year as a financial coach and I will also be offering financial therapy for those who have experienced trauma that affects their relationship with money and what they use it for. My wife, Dr Anna Walton, will be the qualified specialist for this work when its needed.
“EQ is a firm where people can come and engage and it’s never about the money first. Most firms vetting process will ask you what you have in terms of assets. To go through Evoke, you don’t need assets.
“You may have them and we do get to that stuff. By training to be a coach, I am looking at my own way to bridge the ‘advice gap’, where people can work off hourly rates and not percentages of the assets held. I am not tied to any particular way of working or charging and that is why the company needs to stay small; to allow that fluidity.”
