Founding Financial Adviser in London

We are working with a newly launched financial advice firm to recruit their first advisers, ahead of serving their first customers in 2027. Our client has been founded by an entrepreneurial team who previously built and successfully exited a well-known UK technology business. They have spent the past year learning the advice industry in depth — including sitting the Level 4 exams themselves — and are backed by a leading early-stage technology investor, alongside individual investors from some of the best-known names in UK fintech and European banking.

THE PROPOSITION

The firm is focused on clients at or approaching retirement, on the basis that this is the life stage where the money decisions are hardest and the stakes highest. Their view is that while the best firms have already moved from financial advice to financial planning, very few go further still — into the big decisions and the weight that surrounds them. Not just what someone should do with their money, but how they think and feel about it. The couple who have stopped discussing retirement because it turns into a disagreement. Working out what someone can genuinely afford to give their children. Helping someone with a comfortable pension find the confidence to spend it. Their argument is that the best advisers already work this way, but usually in the margins and in spite of how their firm expects them to operate. This firm is being built from scratch, with its own technology, so that this sits at the centre of the service rather than being squeezed around it.

THE ROLE

You will advise clients at or near retirement through their biggest financial decisions. As the firm grows, that is where the bulk of your time will sit. In the early months your diary will not be full, and that is deliberate - it is the best window to shape the service alongside the founders and the other early hires. That means testing new approaches, from how a first meeting runs through to how clients are looked after between reviews, and iterating quickly on what works. Client acquisition sits with the founders, though you would play a part - whether that is meeting people considering advice, or helping share how the firm thinks.

WHO THIS WILL SUIT

The firm is open-minded on career stage. You might be a few years into advising, or a senior planner with a long track record. What matters more is how you think about the job:

• You came into this for the planning, not the products
• You would rather ask the harder question than give the easier answer
• You want your work measured by whether a client sleeps better, not by funds under management
• You are excited rather than wary about what technology can do, and it has already changed how you work
• You want to be stretched to deliver the best possible service
• You would rather help shape something unfinished than step into a settled role

Practical requirements:

• Level 4 qualified, with real experience advising clients
• Based within reach of London

THE PACKAGE

• Salary of 60,000 to 100,000 depending on experience — the range is deliberately wide
• EMI share options, giving you a genuine stake in the business
• A bonus scheme is being designed and will sit in addition to salary
• The wider benefits package is still being developed, and early hires will help shape it
• Central London office, at least two days a week initially, with real flexibility beyond that