Judges

Nick Cann

Nick has been Chief Executive of the Institute of Financial Planning for 8 years. He also sits as a delegate on the Financial Planning Standard Board CFP Council. He has served as Chairman of the European CFP Council and the International Marketing and Communications Committee.

A key part of his role is to help practitioners understand the current issues and implement strategies to help with developing a fee-based Financial Planning practice. A focal part of this is developing a comprehensive financial planning service and encouraging more to strive for the internationally accredited Certified Financial Planner Licence.

He sat on the FSA’s Distribution Review working group looking at Professionalism and Reputation. He was voted IFA Personality of the Year at the Professional Adviser awards in 2007.

Michelle Cracknell

Michelle Cracknell was an IFA for 20 years. She started off working in the small self administered pensions arena together with employee benefits works. During this time, she qualified as an Actuary and help grow the business, particularly with the advent of SIPPs and changes in company pension schemes offered by SME companies.

Michelle became a shareholding director of Advisory and Brokerage in 1996. She was involved in the growth of the business and, the succession planning which resulted in the business being sold to AEGON in 2002, who merged it with the other IFA businesses to form Origen.

Fraser Donaldson

Fraser joined Defaqto in November 1994.

Responsible for the maintenance and development of the investment products on the Aequos databases, Fraser specializes in Unit Linked Single Premium products, collective investment schemes and their product wrappers.

As a member of Defaqto’s consultancy team he has authored several market reports including four annual reports on the platform industry.

Ian Forder

Ian is the founder of thinkingpensions Ltd a consultancy specialising in the design and marketing of pension products. He is also director of Albany Marketing Services, set up to assist IFAs and life companies with marketing and communication.

Ian has over thirty years' experience in the pensions industry and is currently working on a number of projects including individual and group SIPPs and other corporate pension products.

Lawrence Gosling

Lawrence is the Group Editorial Director of Incisive Media, publishers of over 69 magazines in the UK, including Professional Adviser.

He was the launch editor of Investment Week, Mortgage Solutions, Cover and International Investment magazines, amongst others and has been a financial services journalist for nearly 20 years, and a professional journalist for nearly 25 years.

He currently has a column in Investment Week called Gosling’s Grouse which is a weekly sideways look at the financial services industry.

He is married with three children and supports Chelsea – something he has done for the last 35 years.

Patrick Harrison

Having left the British Army, Patrick started his  career in financial services in Fetter Lane branch of Old Mutual as a trainee adviser.  He joined Caversham Buchanan Ltd to become an IFA in 1996, and worked alongside the directors to develop the company’s processes, systems and technology development.  Patrick assisted in the design, build and initial sales of 4th Contact, the employee benefits platform which was borne out of Caversham Buchanan Ltd, and later purchased by Vebnet. 

In 2000 Patrick took over as Managing Director of Caversham Buchanan, a company which is now a highly respected employee benefit consultancy that works with the employees and boards of SME’s and has its own training program designed to bring new blood into the industry.

Holly MacKay

Holly has been working in the financial services sector for 10 years and her experience spans the Australian, UK, continental European and, most recently, Indian markets. She runs her own consultancy business, HM Consulting, which she established in February 2007.

Holly started her career in the Australian financial services industry where she developed and ran platforms at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and Norwich Union (Navigator). Returning to the UK in 2003, she headed up Abbey’s wrap proposition and was appointed the UK Director of Santander’s Allfunds Bank in June 2005. 

David Moffat

Born in Zimbabwe and educated in Scotland, David spent 15 years in the asset management industry with Fidelity, Threadneedle and Mellon Bank before joining JPMorgan as FundsHub Sales and Marketing Director. Since 2004 David has primarily worked as a consultant for a number of wrap and platform clients and with the Money Portal Group with responsibility for platform strategy and fund manager relationships.

David recently joined IFDS in the UK where he is responsible for marketing and business development.

Roderic Rennison

Roderic is a financial services professional with 35 years leadership experience which encompasses sales, product development, business strategy, process, M&A, as well as regulation, risk management and finance-raising. Before setting up Rennison Consulting, Roderic was COO of Thinc. Prior to that was Group Financial Services Director at Bradford and Bingley following senior management position at Mercury/Merrill Lynch and Robson Rhodes.

He recently led and chaired the Professionalism and Reputation work stream of the FSA's Retail Distribution Review, responsible for defining future standards for UK intermediary industry.

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