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Join Alex Langhorn, Head of Business Support at BTS and Gee Foottit, Senior Manager, Recruitment Partnerships at St. James’s Place Financial Adviser Academy as they delve into the relevance of the UN IWD 2024 campaign, Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress.Gee brings over 25 years of expertise in finance and entrepreneurship to the table. Driven by a passion for inspiring women in finance, an advocate for gender equality and women's financial independence, striving to be a role model for future generations, including her daughter. Sustainability is also at the core of her philosophy, extending beyond environmental impact to encompass flexible work arrangements, financial freedom, and personal health.As the host of St. James's Place's Partnership recruitment events and career-change podcasts, "The Switch" and "SJP Adviser Stories," Gee explores the secrets of success and shares insights to empower listeners in advancing their careers.

In this episode of the BTS Career Pathways podcast we discuss getting in and getting on in a career in financial planning with the focus on the experience of women in financial services.Joining BTS host, Alex Langhorn to share their insights on this subject we have three fabulous guests. Chloe Phillips, CFP, FPFS and co-founder and mentor at The Paraplanner Club. Emmelia Davidson-Slack, recently qualified Financial Planner having gained DipPFS last year. Emmelia also holds the post of New Professionals Officer at the PFS. Tamsin Caine who is also a CFP and FPFS. Tamsin is a Resolution Accredited Divorce Specialist and Director of Financial Planning at Smart Financial. We tackle some of the tricky questions affecting women breaking into the sector, progressing to senior roles, motherhood as well as the wider topic of distribution of wealth and financial education.

One of the best ways to build and promote your professional brand is to use social media. What is a professional brand and why is it worth thinking about building one?Join us as we chat to special guest Dan Graham about how financial planners can use social media successfully to promote themselves and / or grow their client book.Dan is Head of Community Experience at NextGen Planners and the Chief Designer at docVinci. He’s on a mission to transform financial planning into an innovative, dynamic, and diverse profession and bring financial services into the 21st century.

Join us as the BTS L&D experts chat to special guests Jon Dunckley and Hayley Brown about how neurodiversity affects the experience of studying for regulated exams and breaking into a career in financial planning; the challenges, the benefits and the study techniques that have worked for others. Plus find out about available help and support. About our guests:Jon Dunckley is Founding Director of ‘About…’ Consulting, a group of training, consulting, and coaching businesses with the single goal of ‘helping ordinary people do extraordinary things.’ A self-confessed psychology geek, he’s constantly looking for ways to help advisers improve outcomes for clients. Having always known that he looked at the world differently to other people, he was formally assessed as Asperger’s in his early 40s. The diagnosis gave him a new way of understanding himself and a passion for helping other neurodivergent people excel in the workplace. He holds the extremely rare distinction of being a Fellow of the LIBF, PFS, CII and CISI as well as being both a Certified and Chartered Financial Planner. He’s also a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management and a Member of the Association for Coaching. He has particular interest in the later life space, with expertise in IHT planning, long term care and later life lending, but he writes and speaks widely on a variety of topics covering all things financial planning. He contributes to no fewer than 7 CII textbooks and tutors for STEP.Hayley Brown is a Corporate Development Manager at the Chartered Insurance Institute. Her current role involves working alongside CII’s largest corporate clients to enhance the knowledge, skills and behaviours of their employees. Hayley has over ten years’ experience in financial services, working with global regulators, firms and bodies alike to further the professionalism of the sector. Prior to working at CII, Hayley held the position of Senior Associate in the FCA’s Culture and Governance Team where she led a project on the importance of Purpose in financial services.

Join us as we chat to special guests Lisa Tipton and Kimberley Malin about their journey to qualified paraplanner and beyond!Find out about the options for qualifications for paraplanners including level 4, level 6 and the route to Chartered.About our special guests:Lisa Tipton is the Director of Financial Planning at New World. Lisa started her career in life offices (many years ago) before moving over to financial planning and paraplanning in 2014 and then co-founding a financial planning firm in 2021. Lisa followed the CII route for exams, starting with the Financial Planning Certificate, before becoming diploma qualified and eventually completing the advanced exams and becoming a Chartered Financial Planner and Fellow of the PFS.Kimberley Malin is a Junior Paraplanner at Four Oaks Financial Services Limited. Having worked in and around the administration roles in the Financial Services industry for around 9 years, with varying levels of seniority, she felt it was time to take her career to the next level. Kimberley wanted to find an opportunity that would allow her to transition from ‘administrator’ to ‘paraplanner’ and has taken several professional exams including the R0 exams towards her Diploma. Passionate about paraplanning as a career in its own right, Kimberley is on a mission to become the ultimate paraplanner!

Join us as we chat live to special guests from the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and London Institute of Banking and Finance (LIBF) examining bodies about the different routes available to achieve a level 4 qualification.The session will be hosted by BTS Director Jeff Scholes with special guests; John Batten – Learning Proposition Manager from the CII, and Richard Cooper – Business Development Manager from the LIBF.About our guests:John Batten is an experienced Learning & Development professional with a keen interest in financial planning, digital learning technology, and sales training. John has spent over 20 years training for insurance and financial services firms and leading teams of trainers delivering sales, technical and qualifications training. He holds the CII Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning and has trained several CII exam units during his career including R01, R02, R05 and R06. Before joining the CII, John was one of their corporate clients at St. James’s Place where he oversaw training for their highly successful Financial Adviser Academy.John joined the CII in 2021 as the Corporate Learning Propositions Manager. John’s role is to develop the learning support offered to the CII’s Corporate and individual members and customers. This support spans live virtual, face-to-face, and digital learning offerings.Richard Cooper joined the London Institute of Banking & Finance as a Business Development Manager in 2021 after nearly 40 years of experience in financial services.He started his career at HMRC before joining AXA. Here he held various sales roles before moving into their regulated training team as a technical sales trainer and then heading up the e-learning and testing team.Richard moved back to sales management in 2010 where he was responsible for the training and development of teams of advisers across the UK before moving into client advice as an IFA. Richard was advising clients as a chartered financial planner and fellow for 10 years before joining LIBF. His role at LIBF is varied and he has responsibility for promoting the professional qualifications provided by LIBF for regulated advisers and paraplanners. He regularly writes technical articles for professional publications as well as running and hosting podcasts and webinars on paraplanning and financial planning.

Join us as we chat about taking the bold step into financial services as a second career. Featuring special guests, Anuj Dal, Professional Cricketer at Derbyshire County Cricket Club and Introducer Appointed Representative at Lee C Dowdall Wealth Management (St James’s Place), and Ben Stebbings, a Financial Planner who enjoyed previous careers in sport and commercial sports medicine roles. Hosted by Luiza Todd of BTS, this episode focuses on what it's like getting into financial services as a second careerist; the pros, the cons, and how to identify your transferrable skills. About our special guests:Ben Stebbings is a financial planner working for Unity Wealth Management in Fareham on the South Coast. He is a career changer having recently made the switch to financial services. The desire to become a financial planner was born out of wanting to build his ideal life and be able to do the same for his clients. This combined with the experience of seeing the value an adviser can bring when witnessing a meeting with his father four years ago that allowed him to retire from a career he despised, inspired Ben to make the move. In a previous life, Ben spent seven years in various commercial roles within the sports medicine and orthopaedic industry and before that seven years as a cricketer. Both careers provided valuable experience and skills that he is now applying to his role as a financial planner.Anuj Dal is a current professional cricketer at Derbyshire County Cricket Club with 65 First Class Appearances, previously at Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club and former England U19s cricketer. He is also the Vice Chair of the Professional Cricketers’ Association. Anuj first started looking into the Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning in 2019 when he was into the last year of his contract at Derbyshire. Unsure whether or not his contract was going to be extended, he began looking at alternative career options. Anuj attended an academy open evening at St James’s Place which sparked his interest even further and has since managed to get 5 of 6 exams completed with R06 to be done in January next year, alongside his cricketing career.

Join us as we chat to special guests from across the industry about their experiences of getting in and getting on in financial services. In this session, we will be joined by Ruth Downs DipPFS, Financial Adviser at Reflect Financial and James Tout, Aspiring Financial Planner and current CII Level 4 Diploma student, to talk about their experiences of making the break into financial services.About our special guests:Ruth Downs is an experienced financial adviser with a difference. Genuine, friendly, and all-round animal lover. With a varied previous career as a promotions model, air hostess and fieldwork and operations manager for a global communications agency, Ruth's financial journey began in 2015 whilst helping her mum recover from major heart surgery. During this process she found a passion for finance and decided to study and use her knowledge to help simplify finance for others with straight talking, jargon-free advice.James Tout worked in PR and journalism for 18 years before deciding to change career and train as a financial planner, out of a general interest in investing. After providing friends and family with informal advice on their investments, he started to think seriously about retraining and began his first CII module in early 2020, while still working as a freelance in corporate communications. His studies were somewhat waylaid by the pandemic, but after passing R01 in May last year, he's since used the BTS guides to pass units R02-R05 on first attempt. He is taking R06 this month (April) and is now actively looking for his first job in the industry to complete the transition away from his 'old' career.Hosted by BTS director, Luiza Todd, don't miss what promises to be an honest account of what it takes to break into the sector!www.bespoketrainingsolutions.com