A note from Chris – April 2023

Chris Broome – Managing Director

A note from Chris

The first quarter of 2023 has certainly flown by, hasn’t it?!

Tax year end was of course a busy period of time for us, especially with the news of tax legislation changes and how they will impact our clients as we enter 2023/24.

We’ve also welcomed a number of new and established households and businesses in as clients. And so, to those reading this, welcome to Longhurst once again.

As always, a lot of other things have happened within Longhurst over the past three months, which I’m pleased to update you on below.

Albion Consulting

New Team Members

During March we saw new team members join both our paraplanning and investment consultancy departments. They are:

  • Benjamin Fabi – Benjamin is a technically proficient, accomplished paraplanner. Qualified as a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society, he is proud to abide by the Society’s Code of Ethics. Benjamin will provide assistance in all areas of report production, financial product and technical questions, and income drawdown strategies.
  • Albion Strategic Consulting – Albion is an investment-focused team working exclusively with leading financial planning firms in the UK, helping to implement and maintain a sensible and robust investment proposition. Albion work with over 65 respected independent financial advice businesses around the UK, in Norway and Hong Kong, who oversee over £18 billion of funds on behalf of their clients.

On behalf of myself and the entire, we welcome Ben, Tim, James, Ben and Dan to the Longhurst family.

Everyone is looking forward to working with and learning from you.

Project Longhurst

Project Longhurst

At Longhurst we are deeply passionate about supporting both our local community and a number of national and international causes.

Our focus is to be more intentioned with our giving, ensuring we direct our financial and non-monetary contributions to proven charitable organisations across important sectors to our team and our clients.

As such, in January 2023 we launched our firm’s first ever corporate charitable giving programme, called ‘Project Longhurst’.

Annually, we will be donating a minimum sum of money across all causes, with us retaining each charity for at least 3 years.

We also hope to inspire other firms within our sector, and our own clients, to follow our lead and establish their own charitable giving programme.

Professional Adviser Awards

Following on from our success in 2022, we are delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted in THREE award categories in the Professional Adviser Awards 2023.

  1. Adviser Firm of the Year (Midlands & East Anglia) – based on a case study submission plus an overview of our business.
  2. Best Client Engagement (Advisers) – based on how we engage with our wonderful clients. Having won this category in 2021 and 2022, we are hoping for the hat-trick this year.
  3. Best Retirement Initiative – based on our trademarked SmartRetire® planning service, where we combined expert financial advice with retirement transition coaching (and many other added values).

Being nominated for these awards mean so much to us, as they recognise our continued approach to delivering a truly human-focused financial planning service to the clients and households who employ us.

BS 8577 Certified

BS 8577 Accreditation achieved

It gives me great pleasure to write and inform you that Longhurst has successfully been awarded BS 8577 – Framework for the provision of financial advice and planning services by Standards International Ltd.  

Our assessors comments and examples of excellence included:

  • Processes = It is rare to meet a firm that can demonstrate that there are clear, documented processes in place. Longhurst can do so in abundance.
  • Awards = Longhurst has won multiple awards during its relatively short history.
  • Project Longhurst = I love this project and the priorities that have been set to underpin the firm’s charitable work in the next three years.
  • Branding = Both internal and client documentation is beautifully produced pure eye candy!

Standards International is the only certification body in the world dedicated to raising the standards of excellence in financial services, a cause that we commit to fully. You can find out more about their work here: www.standardsinternational.co.uk.

Any questions

As I sign off our latest quarterly operations note, I just want to say that if you have any questions in relation to any of the above, please do not hesitate to get in contact with me or one of the team.