This story isn’t really about two advisers setting up on their own – it’s about why new advice models are starting to emerge. Here’s what struck me when I read this in Professional Adviser: https://www.professionaladviser.com/interview/4523675/advice-firm-born-frustration? This isn’t just another “two advisers set up on their own” story. It’s a very clear signal of why new advice models are starting to appear – and why they’ll keep appearing. The firm wasn’t born out of ambition to scale fast or sell one day. It was born out of frustration. Frustration that advice in larger firms had become narrow, investment-led and commercially constrained. Frustration that advisers could help families more holistically but were actively discouraged from doing so. That’s important. What Freshney and Silk describe is something I hear repeatedly from advisers at different stages of their careers. Clients don’t arrive neatly packaged as “investable assets”. They arrive as families, businesses, generations, competing priorities and life decisions. Yet the traditional percentage-of-assets model struggles to serve that reality – especially when younger family members need guidance but don’t yet have wealth in their own name. Their move to a fixed-fee, family-based model feels less like a pricing tweak and more like a structural shift. It removes some of the conflicts that sit quietly inside the traditional model and opens the door to serving people who have always been pushed to the edges of advice. In other words, it directly touches the advice gap without dressing it up as a social mission. What I also find interesting is that this isn’t being positioned as “anti-regulation” or “anti-networks”. They’ve deliberately chosen a supported independent route, kept the firm small, and focused on expanding services rather than client numbers. That’s a very different growth mindset to the one many advisers were taught.

Not seen this approach before - quite a neat idea from Gary Mckeown of Kew Tree Wealth.

Nicely said @Pete Matthew . Far too many financial planners adamant that their way of doing things is the only way of doing things. I think it's brilliant that Pete essentially has two business models sitting alongside one another. Full article

At the end of each month, use this thread to tell us what's gone well during the month. It could be winning a great new client, being referred to someone, a brilliant testimonial, passing an exam, successfully changing something in your business, getting a long-awaited response from a provider - anything! No success is too small - let's hear what's going well. You'll get an automatic reminder to post at the end of the month. Over to you...

Do you work with clients in the later life lending/equity release space?