Judges

Nick Cann

Nick has been Chief Executive of the Institute of Financial Planning for 12 years. He also sits as a delegate on the Financial Planning Standard Board CFP Council. He is Chairman of the FPSB European Forum and Chairman of the FPSB CEO Forum.

In addition to influencing the development of the Financial Planning profession, 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 embracing the opportunities that are now available.

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.

Nigel Aston

Nigel is Business Development Director at DCisions, a technology business specialising in unlocking consumer insight. Before that he led strategy and propositions at Standard Life Corporate. He has specialised in DC pensions and investment for 20 years.

DCisions measures the investment performance experienced by consumers and tracks their behaviour and savings decisions over time. DCisions enables investment platforms, asset managers and advisers to better understand their customers and improve the value of those relationships.

Michelle Cracknell

With over 23 year's experience in financial services, Michelle Cracknell has worked as an adviser and for a major platform provider. She is a qualified actuary with experience in business and proposition development having managed sales and administration teams. Her specialist knowledge is in employee benefits and self-administered pensions and makes regular public speaking appearances in the media including the pensions panel on Moneybox Live.
She now works for Bluerock Consulting who are financial services management consultants.

Alan Easter

Alan is strategy, Product and Commercial Development Director at Honister Capital.

He has worked in the industry for over 20 years. He has enjoyed senior, Executive and Board positions in IFA Sales (Scottish Life and AXA), Direct to Consumer (Interactive Investor), European Distribution in Italy (AMP) and Fund Management and US Distribution out of Miami and New York (L&C). Having been asked by the Board and Investors to become involved in Millfield plc he successfully removed its market listing, placed it into administration and led the sale process of Millfield and Sage to Money Portal where he remained until Honister Capital completed a Management Buy-Out.

Ian Forder

Ian is the founder of thinkingpensions Ltd a consultancy specialising in the design and marketing of pension products. Ian has over thirty years' experience in the pensions industry and is currently working with providers on a number of projects including individual and group SIPPs, a new corporate wrap proposition, RDR and auto-enrolment.

Edward Glyn

Edward Glyn is SWIFT’s Director of Funds. He is responsible for leading SWIFT’s funds business across EMEA, helping clients drive distribution and increase operational efficiency across their mutual, pension, money market and hedge fund activities.

Edward has fifteen years experience in the banking, securities and wealth management arenas with particular expertise in the client proposition and distribution dynamics of the asset management sector and its associated technologies. Prior to joining SWIFT, he 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 to look after the UK Funds business 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.

Mark Loosmore

Mark has a successful track record of Sales & Marketing into IT and the Financial Services market place, including helping both NCR and AT&T to establish themselves as key technology suppliers to the Insurance sector. In his role as Business Development Director for Focus Solutions Group plc, he led the company's growth - developing and launching new market propositions that resulted in a twenty fold increase in revenues.

His knowledge of IT and the financial services market place, combined with his core sales & marketing disciplines and industry network mean that Mark can help IT companies looking to sell their products and services to the Financial services market place as well as being able to advise Financial Services Companies on how they can take full advantage of the e-commerce tools available.

Mark's experience in creating successful business development strategies and helping companies to achieve step change in business growth, position him well in being able to assist both new and existing companies accomplish their ambitious growth plans.

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.

Geoff Mills

Geoff is Director and co-founder of Rayner Spencer Mills which provides fund research, fund analysis and ratings plus independent outsourced investment solutions to the UK Advisory sector.
Having joined Eagle Star as a Graduate Trainee in 1969, Geoff then moved to Phoenix Assurance as Sheffield branch manager. He then joined Leeds Permanent Building Society as Insurance Services Manager and became Managing Director of their IFA subsidiary company in 1989. After the merger with the Halifax he was appointed Operations Director for the combined IFA business with a sales force of 150 IFAs.

In 1999 he joined Bradford & Bingley to lead the Group Financial Services team which had responsibility for the development of IFA strategy, product development and research supporting over 1,000 IFAs. He left in 2004 to establish Rayner Spencer Mills which is now recognised amongst the leading providers of quality impartial research to the wider financial services marketplace in the UK.

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 over 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, now Bluefin. Prior to that was Group Financial Services Director at Bradford and Bingley following senior management positions at Mercury/Merrill Lynch and Robson Rhodes, the chartered accountants, now part of Grant Thornton.

He 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.

Roderic is also a director of the Ideas Lab which provides practical consultancy to providers, investment management groups and intermediaries in relation to addressing the challenges arising from the RDR and market change generally.

He has been active in the affairs of the Chartered Insurance Institute and the Personal Finance Society over a number of years and is currently a member of the CII's Disciplinary Committee.

Rob Sanders

Ian Shipway

Ian is Financial Planning Director of Succession Advisory Services.

He spent the early part of his career at sea before joining the sales force of a small UK Life company.  In 1990 he formed his own independent advisory business and built it to become one of the leading financial planning businesses in the UK before the firm was acquired by Thinc Group (now Bluefin) in 2003. He left Bluefin in 2009 and joined Succession Advisory Services as Financial Planning Director.

Ian has been actively involved in the development of the financial planning profession in the UK. He sat on the International CFP Council for three years and is a Past President of the Institute of Financial Planning. He is a Fellow of the Institute and a Certified Financial Planner professional.

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