Our hearty congratulations go to Jane Wheeler, Principal of Direction Financial Planning based in Taunton, Somerset, for winning the Professional Adviser Baillie Gifford Financial Education Award at the Professional Adviser Awards 2010 which was held at the London Hilton, Park Lane on Thursday 21 January 2010. In an unusual step the judges have highly commended the four runners up which includes Arch Financial Planning Limited.

Although we would have liked to have won the award we really cannot be disapointed to have been shortlisted and now, highly commended, in such noble company. Jane Wheeler is a Past President of the Institute of Financial Planning and at the Professional Adviser Awards in 2008 was voted IFA Personality of the Year. Jane has written a book, Sorted! DIY Financial Planning – How to Get The Life You Want. I have ordered my copy from Amazon (£8.98 and free delivery) and will be reporting my thoughts about it to Jane in due course!

Last year’s winner and shortlisted again this year was Verus Chartered Financial Planners based in Dundee, Scotland. Their director, Paul Lothian, is the Immediate Past President of the Personal Finance Society (PFS). Also shortlisted was Lowes Financial Management based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Their Managing Director, Ian Lowes has been frequently recognised by Professional Adviser magazine as one of the Top 50 most influential independent advisers in the country. Congratulations to Ian for taking the Professional Adviser 2010 award for Best IFA Website. The final company shortlisted was the UK’s leading discount broker, Chelsea Financial Services based in London. Darius McDermott, the managing director of Chelsea Financial Services, was awarded the Professional Adviser 2010 IFA Personality of the Year.

We can only be delighted that Arch Financial Planning Limited was included in such company. This is the third year that the Professional Adviser Baillie Gifford Award has been made and Arch has been shortlisted on each occasion, winning the award in 2008 and being highly commended in 2009 and 2010. Coupled with Arch Financial Planning Limited being named New Model Adviser of the Year 2010 for the South East Region at the New Model Adviser Conference & Awards, held at the Lancaster Hotel, London, on 14/15 January we have not had a bad start to the year!

The Professional Adviser Baillie Gifford Financial Education Award recognises financial education programmes and initiatives that firms have taken over the last year to improve the knowledge of their clients or the wider general public. The judges this year were Nick Cann, Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Financial Planning (IFP); Ken Edwards, Sales Director, Baillie Gifford & Co; Lawrence Gosling, Group Editorial Director, Incisive Media; Katrina Baugh, Editor, Professional Adviser; Ginny Broad, Head of Communications, Investment Management Association (IMA); and Wendy van den Hende, Chief Executive, Personal Finance Education Group (Pfeg).

The New Model Adviser of the Year Awards, run by Citywire, publisher of New Model Adviser magazine, are designed to honour one firm in each of eight regions around the UK that has made the biggest strides in terms of the quality of advice and service it offers.  See Gavin Lumsden’s excellent video produced by Citywire under Top IFAs in the UK named.

If you would like to meet to discuss how we might help you achieve your financial goals, whatever they may be, the simplest way to start is to complete the Personal Questionnaire which you can download from our website. Once we receive the completed questionnaire we will ask the most appropriate adviser to get in touch with you to hold an initial discussion which, if at our office or your home within Surrey, Sussex, Hants, Kent or Central and South London will usually be at our expense (we will inform you beforehand if we need to make a charge for this).

If you would like to discus any aspect of your financial planning please ask your usual Arch adviser, telephone 01483 204600 or email enquiries@arch-fp.co.uk.

The photo is of Professor David (Danny) Blanchflower, not to be confused with that great captain of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club; one of the very few economists to anticipate the severity of the credit crunch, and the keynote speaker at the New Model Adviser Conference 14-15th January 2010.

Danny Blanchflower is Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College in the US but is perhaps best known in the UK for his membership of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC). He left the MPC in June of last year after a period of consistently calling for interest rate cuts in defiance of his peers. 

I have produced a précis from notes that I took of Professor Blanchflower’s speech, The UK economy: Where does it go from here? combined with notes which various Citywire journalists took of that speech and which have been published on the Citywire website (www.citywire.co.uk).

I feel that Professor Blanchflower delivered a vitally important message for all of our clients and for anyone else who is investing for their future. He believes that consumers’ optimism has been racing away with them and that we are all in for a nasty shock as we experience a ‘double dip’ recession. He believes that the rise in house prices is not only unsustainable but that we will see large falls in property prices because, among other things, wages are frozen or falling. He also has important views about interest rates and inflation and the need for further Government ‘quantative easing’.

You can obtain a copy of the précis which I have produced in the form of a Guide: A Sobering Economic Outlook 2010 via the front page of our website at www.arch-fp.co.uk. You can also hear just a few minutes of an interview he gave at the Conference following his presentation so that you can form your own opinion of the man.

This particular New Model Adviser Conference, held at the Lancaster Hotel, London, was a special one for us as Arch Financial Planning was named New Model Adviser of the Year 2010 for the South East Region.

We have also just heard that Arch Financial Planning has been shortlisted for the third year running for the Professional Adviser Baillie Gifford Financial Education Award. The winner will be announced at the Professional Adviser Awards 2010 at the London Hilton, Park Lane on Thursday 21 January.

Please note that this information does not constitute personal advice and should not be treated as a substitute for specific advice based on your circumstances. If you are in any doubt as to whether your investment portfolio is making the best use of the available assets, then you should discuss the matter with a suitably qualified independent financial adviser such as ourselves. An investment into any of the assets mentioned in our Guide: Economic Outlook 2010 is intended as a long-term investment. It is important that you are aware that the value of units in a collective investment scheme, as well as any income which they generate, can fall as well as rise. Where past performance is mentioned please note that the past is not necessarily a guide to future performance.

If you would like to discus a new investment or review your existing investments please ask your usual Arch adviser, telephone 01483 204600 or email enquiries@arch-fp.co.uk.