“Whereas if you're just looking at being an investment manager that looked after one pot - that's going to be the time of the past because the banks will just take over.”
Can you name any lessons you learnt when you first started out?
“When I started, being aware of not knowing everything was a quick learning curve,” he said
“Even if you're in front of the client, I remember very early on they were starting mentioning things I needed more clarity on and it’s just being able to say ‘yeah, that's great I'll look into that, let me take some details down and just take it away'.”
He explained he learnt this quite quickly because there's so many nuances with regulation changes all the time.
“Just be a bit kinder to yourself when you're starting out because you're not going to know it all and the clients don't expect you to know as long as you can follow up.”
Simpson also said trying to do as many different exams as possible and having that breadth of knowledge as well is something that helped.
What has been the biggest change in financial advice since you first started?
“There's been a progression of skills and when I see other advisory firms they are starting to get much more focused on service and value like cash flow modelling,” he said.
“I remember firms around the RDR time were saying, 'fees are just commission by another name' and it took a while for that to kind of die out in the industry. I do feel now you have the cash flow modelling side of things as more integrated services.
“For example, we did tax returns for clients to try and diversify our offering and not just look after investments because performance goes up and down, so I think there has been some professionalism increasing.”
Simpson said he was really excited in 2012 when the FCA came in and said firms were to meet with the regulator every four years.
Within four years, his firm had a meeting with the FCA in which they grilled the firm asking about things such as the conflict of interest policy.
“It was a really good grilling and they gave us some feedback and said this going to happen every four years.
“I welcomed that, I want to be better but then nothing happened since which has been a bit sad from the regulator's side.
“The FSA was so reactive, and they said the FCA is going to be really proactive so I wish that continued because I think that would have really stepped the game up.”
What is the one book you’d recommend to anyone considering a career as a financial adviser?
“The Harvard Business Review is my absolute favourite - it's just on point with everything like AI, what's going on in the industry and things like that so that's my main source of what is going on in the business world,” he said.
