From garden furniture to helping clients with around £250 million of assets
Hi, I'm Chris Clark, Managing Director and Senior Wealth Planner at Advance Wealth.
I've been a financial adviser since April 2005. In March 2009 I started Advance Wealth from my flat, with some garden furniture for office chairs and a lot of determination.
Today, we advise clients with around £250 million of assets, all built from a standing start.
A photo every year
If you visit our office at The Mise Centre in Broomfield, have a look at the wall. We've taken a team photo every year since the beginning. The first one is me in my flat (yes, that grainy look is a proper 2009 Blackberry camera). The latest shows our team of seven advisers, two of whom are Chartered, plus our experienced and qualified team behind the scenes who keep everything running.
It's my favourite thing in the building, because it shows how far we've come together.
Why we hire for values first
We're a culture-led firm. We look for people who genuinely like helping others and who have good values, and then we teach them the technical skills. Skills can be learned. Caring about doing the right thing for people is much harder to teach.
We even wrote our culture down. Our 11 points of culture sit behind everything we do, and a few of them matter most to the people we look after:
- Friendship. Clients value a relationship, not a transaction. We aim to be your friend, or at least a friendly voice.
- Respect. No arrogance, no jargon, no talking down. Just respect for you and what you've built.
- Being organised. Good processes mean consistent, reliable service, and they free us up to think ahead for you.
- Helping each other. Nobody here is above or below any task. If someone has a better skill for your situation, they'll be the one helping you.
- Security. It's one of the strongest human needs, and creating it is what we're here for, for our clients and for our own team.
- Always improving. We regularly ask ourselves whether we're getting better, and we encourage our team to suggest improvements without fear.
What I still enjoy most
After more than 20 years, I still get a buzz every time someone new joins the Advance Wealth family. We know we could be on a journey together for decades, and there's something special about the very start of that.
One moment has always stayed with me. A lady came to see me who was sure she could never retire. She no longer enjoyed her job and wanted more time to look after her mum. We gathered everything together and built a plan, and found she could actually retire whenever she chose. She cried when we worked it out. That's why I do this.
I also love watching our own people grow, and seeing the business develop alongside them.
Come and meet us
If you'd like to talk things through, we'd be happy to meet you at our Broomfield office.
