We are thus planning the first of a number of such opportunities when we will be holding a ‘Market Briefing’ event in London. The subject matter was selected because of the last few months of turbulence within global equity markets.

This followed the sub prime mortgage market starting to unravel in the US, whilst in the UK Northern Rock have had to be bailed out by the Bank of England. At this event Justin Urquart Stewart will be providing us with his usual humorous and entertaining review of global equity markets including both positive and negative indicators.

Company Values

In our afternoon session we reviewed and discussed our company values. More detail about this exercise will follow in due course.

To view the 2006 Team Day, click here


The Client Experience

Joining us were seven clients who were asked to share their “client experience". We wanted to learn how we might improve our service, and we also discussed what, if any additional services may be required in the future from a financial planning practice such as ours and how we might deliver those services.

Our time together was extremely constructive and gave us numerous ideas to explore in terms of building our future client service offering.

A number of themes emerged. We were reminded that:

  1. We have been appointed because we are first and foremost financial planners, who regard a client’s financial assets as a means to an end rather than as an end in themselves.
  2. Although portfolio valuations are important it is the time we spend listening to our clients and understanding their issues which is most highly valued.

We learned that:

  1. Some would like the option of receiving financial data on disk.
  2. Clients would like to set the Review Meeting Agenda.

As a result of the day we are:

  1. Formulating a CD based review package, which will be available shortly.
  2. Inviting clients to set their own review meeting agenda, to which we will add any additional areas we believe need to be covered.
  3. Introducing a new service agreement, which both Paradigm Norton and our clients sign. This sets out an expectation as to what both parties have committed to do and by when.

In addition, we have now undertaken the most comprehensive client survey in the history of the firm under the expert direction of Lin Ashurst – Head of Paradigm Norton Practice Development.

The independent survey was arranged through Advisor Impact a US based survey firm with significant expertise in the financial planning community. We shall be highlighting the key issues arising from the feedback report in the next copy of Paradigm Norton’s newsletter  - Paragraph.

Interestingly the survey highlighted that there is a desire and an appetite from within our clients for educational events, which combine theory and practice.