In 1999 Ed made a decision to move from a financial services Head Office role, where he was mainly involved in training salespeople to pass professional qualifications, to become an independent financial adviser.
Looking around at what professions such as lawyers and accountants did, Ed decided to take a different route. Having qualified as a Fellow of the Society of Financial Advisers, a Fellow of the Institute of Financial Planning and gained the Certified Financial PlannerTM licence he approached a firm of independent advisers who worked with other professionals on a proper fee basis and began his pupillage.
Over the first 11 years in financial planning Ed was fortunate enough to be able to work with and learn from some great financial planners. In 2010 Ed joined Shaw Gibbs Financial Services, part of an Oxford based accountancy firm and was asked to turn it into a truly fee-based, service oriented, financial planning practice. In 2012 Ed took over as Director of the financial planning division and for the next 11 years built on the principles of professional financial planning with client service at the heart of everything his team did.
When Shaw Gibbs decided in 2023 to sell the financial planning business and focus on their core accountancy business and private equity funded acquisitions, Ed made the decision that if he was to continue to deliver what he had become a financial planner for in the first place, it was time to set up Pelican Financial Planning, with the support of Validpath, a network of truly independent financial planning businesses.
As a Chartered Financial Planner, Fellow of the Personal Finance Society, Chartered Wealth Manager, Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments (Financial Planning) and Certified Financial PlannerTM, I am one of the top UK financial planning professionals.
In reality however, I remain a frustrated historian, frustrated mainly by the fact that I never worked out how to make history a career without becoming a teacher. Outside the family, rugby and cricket remain key interests; no longer playing or coaching, I’m still a keen supporter of Buckingham Rugby club and, while the memories of 1 wicket, 1 catch and 1 run against Estonia now fade into the distance, can still occasionally be found in whites (so long as the standard lies somewhere between social and very social).
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I began my working life in financial services administration, initially in a regional branch before moving to a Head Office role with Target Life and later AXA. Having decided this wasn’t stressful enough, I moved on to organising a family of three wonderful children, one largely frustrating husband and a menagerie of dogs, cats, ponies and horses. With all my children at school I began my second career in teaching, specialising in children with special educational needs. After 15 years of what was an incredibly mentally and physically demanding role I now combine the roles of financial planning administration and organising a largely frustrating husband as Practice Manager for Pelican.
Horses, dogs, cats and children still focus heavily in my life, balanced by a burgeoning love of yoga that will see me off to a retreat in Switzerland in 2024 and hopefully the Himalayas in 2026.
