DAN BODEN has come a long way since quitting his sales job for a career in financial services. In that time he’s seen what he likes — and doesn’t like — about the financial advice profession. Here he tells ROBIN POWELL why he’s joined the RockWealth team in Cheltenham, and why his new firm is blazing a trail that other advice businesses will follow.
RP: What attracted you to the idea of working with RockWealth?
I’ve known (RockWealth’s founding partner) Tim Horrocks for a good few years and we’ve kept in touch, so I’ve kept abreast of what RockWealth has been doing and the direction that the firm has been going in. It has always been a firm that I’ve held in high esteem. When I was looking to move on from my last job (at Ermin Fosse in Cirencester), and I spoke with Tim and (his fellow partner) Mark, the key thing for me was that we share the same values. We share the same ideas about the direction the industry should be heading in and about how the job should be done. That was the main reason why I decided to join.
You’re still very new in the job. What are your early impressions?
You never fully appreciate what a place is like to work at immediately. But my initial impressions are all very positive. It’s a very collaborative place to work, very supportive, everyone’s there to help each other. It feels like a very forward-thinking firm, and everybody is very keen to develop, to improve, to learn from each other and from what’s going on in the wider industry. That feels very reassuring. It can only hold us in good stead for the future.
Could you briefly summarise your career to date?
I used to work in sales and decided I wanted a more professional career. A family friend suggested I went into insurance, but then I came across financial planning and thought that might be better suited to me. So I went on to do all the exams in my spare time. I left my sales job, my salary halved, and I commuted from Birmingham to Cheltenham every day to work at Endsleigh. It was a good foothold in the industry: I learned some of the core competencies, especially dealing with clients. It was predominantly protection sales at that point, but then Endsleigh developed into a more regulated business, providing pensions and so on. I wanted to move on from telephone-based advice, so I joined a company called English Mutual, based in Worcester. They were a bigger IFA with branches of offices around the country and they got taken over by Sanlam shortly after I joined them. That was a different proposition altogether: I went from being at an IFA to a restricted advice firm overnight, and that just didn’t really sit well with me. So I decided to move on to a local firm in Cirencester, Kellands Cotswolds, which grew into Ermin Fosse. I had an incredible time there for seven years – I became a partner at the firm and took responsibility for business development and marketing. But I decided it was time to go and now I’m delighted to be at RockWealth.
What is it about financial planning that you enjoy so much?
It’s a professional career and the sky’s the limit, really, with how far you want to take things. There are opportunities to specialise in different areas. It also involves a lot of problem solving. From the outside looking in, those were the things that I thought would suit me well. Ultimately, I’m a people-person, and I think that’s a good place to start from. I get to speak to a lot of interesting people, which is hugely rewarding, and there’s scope to be entrepreneurial as well. The industry is quite challenging and it’s always changing, so you need to have the desire and the determination to keep your knowledge up to date. But, more than anything, what I like most about it is that you are genuinely making a difference to people’s lives. There aren’t many jobs where you can say that, and I think that’s incredibly powerful.
Evidence-based investing is a big part of RockWealth’s philosophy. What are your views on EBI?
The shift towards evidence-based investing is a natural evolution within our industry. The outsourcing of model portfolios has been transformative because it has made financial planners face up to the fact that they’re not investment managers. Planners should focus on the financial planning aspect and leave investment management to those who have that expertise. The main benefit of EBI is the huge cost saving, but it also helps planners and their clients to focus on what they can actually control. It’s about not having to rely on hunches or guesswork, and it’s about leaving as little as possible to chance. All of those things combined lead to better outcomes for clients in the long term.
RockWealth is very enthusiastic about ESG and sustainable investing. What are your thoughts on that?
I think it’s a great thing, both for clients and for society as a whole, that ESG investing is becoming more popular. Because it’s still fairly new, we don’t have enough data to draw firm conclusions on long-term returns, but the evidence so far suggests there should be little or no drag in performance from tilting your portfolio to ESG. That’s encouraging to clients. Also, of course, the focus on ESG is applying pressure on companies to improve their practices, to become more environmentally friendly, and to make themselves better places for their employees to work. So I think it’s a very positive thing. I’m glad that RockWealth is so passionate about it, and also that we walk the walk on climate change. RockWealth Cheltenham is now carbon-neutral, so we practice what we preach.
RockWealth has a fixed-fee charging structure. Why is that preferable to the percentage fees that most advisers charge?
I think it’s imperative that clients receive value for money. With fixed fees, advisers are more accountable for their ongoing remuneration, and, in the long term, it can work out very much cheaper for clients. Again, it’s all about delivering better outcomes. Essentially, because it leaves more money in clients’ portfolios, it should lead to higher returns in the long run, all things being equal. Clients like to see exactly what they’re paying — and exactly what they’re getting for those fees as well.
WHAT NEXT?
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