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.

Anita Athwal

Anita has over 18 years experience in Human Resources which has been gained in both large international organisations and smaller businesses including; BAA, Alcatel Telecom, Nortel Networks, EDS and Cornhill Insurance. Since leaving her last role at Morse Group Ltd, an IT Consultancy, where she was HR Director/Partner for Human Capital, Anita has set up her own HR Consultancy, Client Centred HR Solutions.

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 five 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.

Edward Glyn

Edward is SWIFT’s Director of Funds for the UK and Northern Europe. He is responsible for leading SWIFT’s Funds business in the UK and Nordics, as well as helping drive cross-border funds activity in Continental Europe and Asia.

He has twelve years experience in the banking, securities and wealth management arenas with particular expertise in the distribution dynamics of the asset management sector and associated technologies. Prior to joining SWIFT, Edward spent a number of years in key commercial and strategic roles at Investia (former parent of JPMorgan FundsHub), ERI Bancaire, Thomson Financial and LVMH. He joined SWIFT in his current role in 2005.

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.  In 1996, he joined a small boutique brokerage to become an IFA and worked alongside the directors to develop the company’s processes, systems and revenue model.  He assisted in the design, build and initial sales of 4th Contact, the employee benefits platform that was borne out of the firm and later purchased by Vebnet.

In 2000 Patrick was invited to take over as Managing Director and from there he built a successful and profitable employee benefits/private client business.

In early 2009 Patrick joined forces with the directors of The English Mutual Group where he is now deeply involved in developing further a truly special financial planning practice.

Nick Locke

Nick is a senior technical consultant and has been with Logica for more than twenty years. In that time, he has undertaken many roles from programming through to running the financial services business in one of Logica's regional offices. His entire time with Logica has been spent in the financial services arena, with exposure to many areas, such as banking, general insurance, direct insurance, life and pensions, IFA front office and IFA back office. The technical consultant role involves Nick in many facets of the software development and implementation process, such as architecture, scalability, performance, availability and security. At the same time, Nick's long-term involvement with the sector allows him to take a pragmatic view of the technology, cogniscent of the absolute need for it to deliver value within the overall business model.

Holly MacKay

Holly has been working with fund distribution platforms for over 10 years and her experience spans the Australian, UK and continental European markets. Holly is Managing Director of The Platforum which she founded in February 2007. The Platforum provides consultancy, research and events to the financial services sector.

Holly started her career in the Australian financial services industry where she developed and ran investment platforms at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and Norwich Union. On returning to the UK in 2003, she worked as a specialist fund platform consultant to both providers and distributors before being recruited to Abbey in 2004 to head up their new wrap proposition. After the Santander acquisition of Abbey, Holly was appointed the UK Director of Allfunds Bank in June 2005 and launched the institutional platform in the UK in 2006.

Holly read French and Spanish at New College, Oxford University and holds a graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investments from the Securities Institute of Australia. She has dual British and Australian citizenship.

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 joined IFDS in the UK in 2007 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.

Back to top