Finding career success with 2plan – an interview with David Schofield
The benefits of working as a self-employed financial adviser are huge – and for the right person with the right amount of drive and ambition, the rewards can be exponential. In this blog, we meet David Schofield, a self-employed Registered Individual at 2plan with a niche in providing advice to the medical profession. With a very successful financial advice business, David shares with us his experience, his career path and his journey to joining 2plan, as well as the self-employed financial benefits of working with 2plan and how it has benefitted his clients, too.
Meet David
David has been a Registered Individual at 2plan since April 2018. With 15 years of experience in the financial services industry, David began his career training as a mortgage adviser and completed his CeMAP before working as a self-employed mortgage adviser via a local estate agent. But he had ambitions to push himself much further – and so he decided to get into financial planning and joined a network that encouraged mortgage advisers to progress into different areas of financial planning. He then joined Barclays around the time of the Retail Distribution Review.
After leaving Barclays, David joined a firm as an employed adviser where he completed his Level 4 diploma and started to build up a client base specialising in the GP sector and NHS pensions. However, David still had ambitions to move into wealth management where he would be able to offer holistic advice rather than providing a protection-based advisory service. As a result, he made the decision to join a directly authorised firm on a self-employed basis and build up his own business from scratch. At the same time, David was also providing mortgage and insurance advice for another directly authorised mortgage firm – however, due to his growing client base, it became clear he needed to start giving full advice under one firm. And so he started looking for suitable firms to partner with…
Partnering with 2plan
In addition to needing to give advice under one firm, David was also becoming frustrated with time-consuming and restrictive systems and paper-based fact finds. “2plan is completely different,” David says. “If you look at the 2plan system, it’s absolutely brilliant. It really cuts down on the time collecting information and doing research, which means I can spend more time where I need to be – in front of people offering advice. The systems are really slick and far superior to any others I’ve worked with, and they are also good for the customer to engage with, too.”
And there are further self-employed financial adviser benefits, too. In fact, another positive of 2plan was that David was able to really market himself and put himself out there. “At my previous firm, there weren’t enough opportunities to market and promote myself. I had real ambitions of growing my firm and getting my name out there – I just needed the right opportunity to be able to do so. I wanted to start building and marketing a business myself, and I essentially wanted to get all my advice under one umbrella rather than working under two directly authorised firms.”
David didn’t take the decision to join 2plan lightly, though. “I was in touch with four or five companies – I didn’t want to rush things, I wanted to see what was in the market – and 2plan seemed to perfectly match my ambition.” So, what’s next for David? “I’m looking at becoming an Appointed Representative with 2plan within the next year so that I can bring my son into the business and build a succession plan. With the support on offer from 2plan, there is scope to double the business.”
The benefits of partnering with 2plan
So, according to David, what are the self-employed financial adviser benefits of partnering with 2plan? “Joining with 2plan has essentially made my life much easier because I can do things much more quickly, freeing up my time to focus on what’s really important – client relationships. Networking is key to what I do – in fact, 75-80% of my business comes through referrals – so having more time face-to-face with my clients is priceless.”
And 2plan’s virtual administration service also helps with that. “The virtual admin service is really helpful and effective when it comes to getting reports done – and it also gives me peace of mind from a compliance perspective, too,” David says. “My time is best spent sat in front of people – and 2plan’s systems enable me to do just that. The commission rates and rates of pay are also a lot higher than previous firms I have worked with, which means I have increased my income but at the same time reduced my workload – which has significantly improved my work/life balance as well!”
David also enjoys being his own boss and the flexibility that comes with being self-employed: “In previous employed roles, I found being micro-managed very frustrating. I like to be able to be my own boss, make my own decisions and work around my client and family commitments. The great thing about 2plan is that they give me that flexibility but at the same time also provide me with all the tools I need to succeed.”
The client benefits of partnering with 2plan
Partnering with 2plan hasn’t just been good for David though – it has also been great for his clients, too. “One of the things that drove me to join 2plan is that – because of their position in the market – they’ve got preferential rates with a lot of providers, and they pass those preferential reduction rates directly to the client. So as soon as I brought my clients across, although they had the same providers as before, there was a reduction in charges right away. Also, because I have the flexibility of working from home, I can offer a reasonable pricing structure. The industry has changed, people are becoming more cost-conscious and looking at what they are charged, especially because of the internet and people doing their own research. As a result, it’s really important to be competitive – and 2plan allows me to do just that.”
Thinking about making the move?
For those that are sat on the fence currently trying to decide whether to make the move or not, David says this: “I did a lot of research before deciding to join 2plan and was very careful about making the next move and wanting it to be the right move. I’m delighted to say that 2plan have delivered on absolutely everything that was promised. They give you plenty of opportunities; they give you your own website, you can market yourself really well, and the building blocks are there to build a really successful business moving forward. I would recommend it to any driven and ambitious adviser.”
Are you ready to grow your business with 2plan? If you want to find out more about the self-employed financial adviser benefits of partnering with a firm such as 2plan, click below to find out more about the roles currently available.