It’s nearly Christmas! Almost time to switch off after another busy year for the RB team. A warm welcome to our new and soon-to-be new clients, along with a huge thank you to our existing clients for your continued custom and professional connections for your ongoing support. Grab a festive treat and read on for an update about what’s been going on since the summer.
People
Callum left RB in November with our very best wishes for the future, as he pursues a different role within financial services.
Activity / Achievements
Helen Morgan and Joanne Vaughan were finalists in the national Professional Adviser Women in Financial Advice awards 2025: ‘Team Leader of the Year’ category. Jo, Helen and Antony enjoyed a wonderful evening representing RB and networking with other finalists at the ceremony in London’s Marriott Grosvenor Square in November.
Fingers crossed for the national Professional Adviser awards ceremony in March 2026 where we have been nominated as finalists again in the ‘ Adviser Team of the year – North East’ category.
Barney Wood has recently been nominated for ‘Best Newcomer’ for the 2026 Growth Community Annual Awards. Fingers crossed for Barney!
Our very own Dan Willers was interviewed for a podcast regarding the impact of changes announced in the Autumn Budget on small business owners.
In November the adviser team attended the annual Humans Under Management conference in London. As always, they came away buzzing with ideas, insights and inspiration around the future of financial planning. It was interesting to understand how technology (AI) can support, but never replace the relationship clients have with their adviser. If anything, AI/tech is leading to an ‘information overload’, making it harder for people to make financial decisions and the need for a trusted adviser to cut through the noise is actually becoming more important, not less.
Barney took part once again in the annual Giants Howarth Sleepout at the Accu stadium in October to raise awareness of homelessness and funds for supporting charities – the Huddersfield Giants Community Trust and Howarths Foundation.
Many of you have left lovely reviews for your adviser on VouchedFor and Google – thank you. There’s still time for 2025 if you haven’t got round to it yet!
A reminder that from February 2026 our status will change from DA (Directly Authorised) to AR (Appointed Representative) as we will join the Best Practice network– this will have minimal impact on clients but for RB it is a welcome move as it will provide more support for our regulatory activities. Whilst this process takes place our status on the FCA register will state that we have applied o be de-authorised – this is nothing to be concerned about as we will be reauthorised simultaneously as an AR firm (but if you have any questions or concerns, please do contact us).
Financial
After months of speculation and rumour, budget day finally arrived and we breathed a sigh of relief that it was pretty benign from a financial planning perspective. If you haven’t seen it, you can read the main changes in full in our blog.
Shoutouts
If you’re considering supporting a local charity, One Community are a Community Foundation for Kirklees, distributing funding to local charities and organisations and we’ve worked with them for a number of years.
The RB team voted to donate our secret santa contributions to the Welcome Centre in Huddersfield this year, who are aiming to raise £50,000, as all contributions up to £250 are being matched by Aviva.
Technology
Our survey software, which will ask you for feedback following your review meeting, has finally been launched! We are always striving for excellence and keen to find ways to ensure that we are delivering the high standards of service that you rightly deserve. Thank you in advance or your support.
Feedback on this software and indeed any feedback is always welcome – you can contact us in any way which suits you.
On the subject of feedback… one regular piece of feedback we receive is that we rarely ask for referrals for new clients – so this is us doing just that. If you have friends or family that you think would benefit from our friendly and clear advice, please send them our way. We are very much open for new business and have capacity to look after any referrals very well. Initial calls and meetings cost nothing except time and we would welcome the opportunity to speak to any new clients.
Wishing you all the best for a healthy, happy, relaxing Christmas and 2026.
Production