Unividual awarded corporate Chartered Status for fourth year

Unividual’s Marketing Director, Cherie-Anne Baxter, said: “Securing Chartered Financial Planners status for another year is a proud achievement for everyone in our company. We were first awarded the status in 2015 after an industry leader suggested that with our reputation and strategy we should be applying.  It is a gruelling application process and we supply pages and pages of supporting evidence but we have obtained the title ever since. It helps Unividual and all our advisers to build and maintain trust. Our business is all about striving to be the best in everything we do from client service through to knowledge and qualifications. This award helps us symbolise that, to date less than 700 firms have achieved Chartered status, so it is a highly exclusive award reserved for the leading firms within the financial advice market.”

Cherie-Anne’s Co-Director and Brother, Lewis Baxter, is a Chartered Financial Planner and joined the business nearly ten years ago as a financial planning assistant. He became one of the youngest financial planners in the country at the time when he qualified. Lewis added: “The Charter title not only gives confidence to Unividual’s clients but generates pride for our employees by encouraging integrity and talent, pushing the benchmark on standards and leading by example to create a respectable face for financial services.

“One stipulation made by the CII is the encouragement of Continual Professional Development of financial advisers. Unividual’s very own financial training programme, Unicadamy, allows us to invest in our staff and lift them to Chartered status, demonstrating the level of knowledge that the CII expects. We aim to combine our reputation as holders of the Charter, with the Unicadamy program, to attract and retain the best financial talent in the country. This allows us to address the shortage of qualified and assured financial professionals and continue to provide a ‘gold standard’ service to our clients for years to come.”

In 2018 Unicademy produced 3 more Chartered Financial Planners for Unividual, all of whom became Fellows of the Personal Finance Society too. Two of these became financial advisers and one a non advising technical specialist. Off of the back of their internal progression Unividual have recently recruited two new members of staff on to Unicademy who start January 2019 and plan on recruiting more staff for the Bath and London branch throughout the spring.