We are an IFA (Independent Financial Adviser) firm but are best described as Financial Planners.
We’re based in Cheltenham, predominantly looking after clients in Gloucestershire and London, but thanks to video meetings, we have clients all over the country.
We believe good advice is about keeping things simple, low cost and tax efficient. We aim to be relentlessly responsive. And fully transparent.
I founded Blincoe Financial Planning in 2023, almost fifteen years to the day since starting in the finance industry (my first day was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers – a baptism of fire to say the least).
I originally come from Bury (not the St Edmunds one), went to uni in Bath, worked in London for ten years in investment banking, before emigrating down the M4 to Cheltenham and embarking on a career in Financial Planning in 2018.
I spend my spare time building train tracks and playing dinosaurs (occasionally with my two young sons), I’m mad about cricket, and also love running whilst listening to the entire Oasis back-catalogue on repeat.
It’s taken a decade-and-a-half to get here, but in Blincoe Financial Planning, I’ve found something that I genuinely love. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to meet with new and existing clients, and to help them make the most of their financial resources to live their very best lives.
Founder and Chartered Financial Planner
at Blincoe Financial Planning
Most advisers are stuck in the past when it comes to technology, relying on legacy systems that don’t talk to each other and require extensive manual input.
In contrast, we look to harness the best available technology throughout the Financial Planning process.
Better technology is good for you (faster onboarding, slicker reporting and greater transparency in general), and it’s good for us (improved efficiency and therefore more time to focus on actually providing advice). Moreover, it translates to lower costs for everyone.
With that in mind, we’ve partnered with the following companies to enhance our advice proposition:
We use Asset-Map to create a one-page snapshot of your current financial position. This is a crucial first step – to get you organised and to ‘simplify the overwhelming’.
We use Calendly to book meetings, both in-person and virtual. This eliminates the hassle of back-and-forth emails and ensures we can manage timescales effectively.
We use DeFaqto to carry out platform and investment research. It also enables us to compare performance and volatility data across clients’ existing and proposed portfolios.
DocuSign enables us to get forms signed electronically, eliminating hassle, speeding-up the onboarding process, and greatly reducing paperwork.
Amongst other things, we use FinCalc to perform calculations around annual allowance carry forward, capital gains tax scenarios, investment bond surrenders, etc.
Fundment is currently our preferred investment platform. It is low cost, offers fully digital onboarding, and excellent client reporting via its mobile app and online portal.
Intelliflo is our back-office system, which we use to enter and store client data. Intelliflo integrates with other software providers, which means less re-keying of information. It also comes with a secure messaging portal.
We use Microsoft Word for our reports, Microsoft Teams for our virtual meetings, Microsoft Outlook for email and we truly love a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
We use SmartSearch to complete AML (anti-money laundering) checks on new prospect clients. In most cases, all we need is your name, address and date of birth.
We use Timeline for discretionary investment management and also its cashflow planning software. Timeline extrapolate your position forwards based on over 100 years’ of actual financial data.
We use Toggl to track the actual time taken, per year, to deliver our advice and services to each client.
We use UnderwriteMe for protection quotes. They are a relatively new entrant into the market and enable us to obtain fully underwritten quotes, thereby simplifying the application process and reducing delays in writing insurance contracts.
Blincoe Financial Planning Limited is an appointed representative of Sense Network Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England & Wales, No. 14569306. Registered office: Star Lodge, Montpellier Drive, Cheltenham GL50 1TY. Blincoe Financial Planning Ltd is entered on the Financial Services Register under reference 1000321. The guidance provided within this website is subject to the UK regulatory regime and is therefore primarily targeted at consumers based in the UK. The Financial Ombudsman Service is available to sort out individual complaints that clients and financial services businesses aren’t able to resolve themselves. To contact the Financial Ombudsman Service, please visit www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk.
