Archives: Ambassadors

Brandon is a Trustee of the Responsible Finance Institute Foundation a Non-executive director of Lintel Financial Services Limited and of Obillex Limited and an advisor to Rosette Limited a Shariah merchant bank.

Brandon is an advisory council member of the Institute of International Monetary Research and is a member of the Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics.

He currently lectures at Buckingham University on their Masters in Money, Banking and Central Banking degree course.

Brandon retired from Barclays Bank  in 2004 where he was Treasurer of retail and corporate banking and a member of the banks Executive Committee. Prior to this appointment he was Head of Structured Products at Barclays Capital

Julie Lord is a Chartered and Certified Financial Planner at Magenta – a specialist Financial Planning company that helps its clients pursue their passions and build plans for future security and happiness.

She was an Institute of Financial Planning Board member for 15 years and is a former President.  She has been a member of the FSA Training Advisory Panel; Chairman of the IFP Education Committee and member of the ISO working party and is keen to ensure that all professional advisers are well qualified to deliver the best possible advice to the public. She is currently a member of the PFS Planning Practioner Panel.

As well as being a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments, and a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society, Julie has won numerous Financial Planning awards and is a regular writer and presenter of financial issues in the trade and public press.

She is very passionate about providing the best quality advice to clients and ensuring that Financial Planning businesses are embracing the best possible practices in order to deliver this effectively and profitably.

Sue Flood has worked in the Television Industry since 2001, starting out at Television Centre and progressing through a successful TV programme-making career that included various roles such as Researcher for Top of the Pops, Celebrity Guest Liaison, Location Sourcing, Production Budget, Sales and Promotions (including through BBC Worldwide with responsibility for selling all BBC Programmes to all 130 Global TV Stations Worldwide).

Her roles at the BBC meant she worked with a wide range of household name VIP celebrities including Muhammed Ali, Robert Redford, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Terry Wogan, Chevy Chase, Joan Collins, David Bowie, Cher, Bob Monkhouse, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Tom Jones, Debbie Harry, Donna Summer, Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks, Van Morrison, Seal, Bryan Adams, Bette Midler, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, Cliff Richard, Paul Weller, Bruce Springsteen, Jamiroquai, Robbie Williams, The Spice Girls, Rowan Atkinson, Kate Bush, Joanna Lumley, Queen, Elton John, UB40, The Who, Rod Stewart, various Presidents of the United States of America and many, many more.

Sue has also had senior roles at BUT Music Group, and her volunteer roles have included raising awareness for disabled models for inclusion in the Fashion, Industry and raising awareness for retired Polo Ponies with CEO Sarah Coleman.

More recently, Sue flood has become a key figure in helping to prevent people falling victim to pension fraudsters, having become a victim herself. Sue lost here entire pension fund; along with over 500 other victims of the Ark Pension Scandal. Her response was to set up a campaign group which she has tirelessly supported ever since. She is now also involved in supporting numerous other pension scam victims and pension scam support groups.

She has unique insight and experience in the pensions scam prevention and support space and her relentless campaigning has led to interaction with the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Financial Conduct Authority – watch this space.

Adrian graduated in electronic engineering in 1984 but soon moved to work for James Capel & Co in the City in its IT function. In 1987 Adrian joined James Capel’s (later HSBC’s) Quantitative Techniques business in Edinburgh, specialising in index fund advisory services, indices and market data.

During the 1990s, Adrian was responsible for creating and maintaining index investments worth over £10bn, including some major pension fund clients and collective funds such as those administered by HSBC Asset Management.

Adrian also developed indices for smaller companies and in what became the smart beta sector, such as fundamentally weighted indices and low volatility indices. When the business transferred to Euromoney Institutional Investor plc in 2013, Adrian led the R&D function and promoted the Indices business at conferences and meetings globally.

After Euromoney pulled out of the Indices business in 2018, Adrian, already a qualified counsellor, has been spending time in private practice. He also chairs the investment function at the Scottish Episcopal Church and takes a special interest in responsible investing, and where he is working on a consultancy proposition.

Adrian runs the moneyquestioner.co.uk blog.

Ian began his career in financial services in 1982 at a leading UK Building Society, having then trained as a financial adviser and worked for a direct sales force and an IFA, Ian joined the compliance team of a National IFA.

Following a period working for the Regulator and as Head of Training and Development for an employee benefits consultancy, Ian set up his own risk and compliance consultancy, Compliance Matters UK Limited, in January 2004. Since then, Ian has worked with a number of national and multinational asset managers as well as some regional and local advisory businesses helping them through the regulatory hurdles of the Insurance Distribution Directive, GDPR, MiFID II and pension freedoms.

Away from financial services, Ian pursues his love of many different genres of music, watches football and being born in Islington is a fan of Arsenal FC. Ian lives in West Sussex with his partner and has an adult daughter and two adult step-sons.

Since 1992, Laurence Wormald has held positions at several central banks, investment
banks and financial technology firms. He is now working as an independent consultant in
investment risk management.

Laurence started his career as a university lecturer in
theoretical physics, before joining an investment team at the Bank for International Settlements in Basle in 1992. He went on to work at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt
and the at the Bank of England (Monetary Analysis Division) until 2002, supporting the economic research and monetary policy committees at those central banks.

After a spell as chief risk officer for a London-based proprietary trading unit of Deutsche Bank until 2008, for 10 years Laurence held the position of head of research at FIS’ buy-side, valuation and trading businesses, responsible for the team which developed and maintains the widely-used multi-asset-class market factor risk model APT.

Risk management underpins all modern finance as the essential discipline for practitioners and financial product development. The integrity of the models which are used in risk management is critical to transparency and policy-making across banking, investment management and trading. Laurence has served on the councils of academic institutions such as the Centre for Computational Finance at Essex University, and with professional
societies such as Inquire UK, to try to develop the most intuitive and rigorous models for pricing and risk management.

Tom is 57, has had a moustache since long before facial hair became fashionable, rides a Triumph Tiger in London and a Harley Davidson elsewhere, rows 5km in 20 minutes on his machine most mornings and is a decade into learning the art of Tai Chi. He’s proud that LifeSearch customers rate it 4.6/5 on TrustPilot and that the whole business talks about their values of Care, Tolerance, Openness, Honesty and Excellence about 5 times more than they talk about profit, but he’s most proud of Angus, Patrick and Carolina and his 29 year and counting marriage to their mum Alison.

Tom Baigrie is the founder and CEO of LifeSearch, a business that every week helps over 2,000 people protect themselves and their families against the financial catastrophe that death or disability can cause. Tom started LifeSearch back in 1998 and called it that because it searches out the best covers from all the UKs insurers. Today LifeSearch’s 500 strong team is recommended by Money Saving Expert, Compare the Market, Moneysupermarket, Lloyd’s Bank, Which? and many others and is thus the largest protection intermediary in the UK. Since 1998, Tom and LifeSearch have seen more than 85 industry judging panels deem them the best at what they do, but the award that Tom is proudest of is LifeSearch’s third place, at the first time of entering, in the ‘Sunday Times Top 100 Companies to Work For’ listing.

Tom set up LifeSearch originally because he saw banks ripping off customers with policies he could arrange for far lower premiums by shopping around and giving customers proper protection advice. Ever since he’s felt that leading financial services retailers should shape their market and has thus long campaigned for better insurer and distributor practices. His statement that “The claim is our core product, not the policy” is amongst the most widely quoted in today’s UK protection market.

Gareth is a leading expert on advice and technology, particularly applying to the relationship between state benefits and financial products.

After a number of years working on advice and technology projects for Cardiff Citizens Advice Bureaux and for the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, during which his project won the British Computer Society Award, he founded Ferret Information Systems, which is Europe’s leading specialist company providing social welfare advice technology and consultancy.

Amongst other leading-edge developments, Ferret produced the world’s first large scale roll-out of mobile technology in government and the world’s first WWW advice system in 1995.

Ferret works within the financial services area on tools for assessing sustainability and affordability and for holistic assessments of financial circumstances for customers.

Ferret produces the Future Benefits Model which models the effects of welfare benefits schemes on a rolling five year horizon and is widely used by researchers in academic and other organisations.

Gareth speaks, broadcasts and writes widely on welfare reform, social security, the practice and technology of advice work, and on the application of mobile technology, in the UK and abroad

Liz’s work is centred around discovering and putting values into practice – at a personal level, in organisations and in society as a whole. She combines 20+ years’ experience in culture and leadership development in international financial services organisations with science-based mind-body practices to advise, mentor and develop leaders driving organisational change and developing values-driven cultures.

The UK Values Alliance is a non-profit collaborative group seeking to put values at the heart of society by helping individuals and organisations become more aware of, understand and live their values.

As a steering group member, Liz is part of the leadership team that co-ordinates World Values Day, a successful global campaign to bring attention to values and values-based action around the world.