Anthony Villis is a serial entrepreneur and founder of the multi-award winning wealth management company First Wealth LLP, which recently won the coveted Chartered Financial Planning firm of the Year Award, 2021/2022 and has recently secured Certified B Corp Status. 

 Anthony has recently launched several new businesses the first being Open Advice (https://openadvice.co.uk/), which is a Fintech company which has built software which been designed to close the “advice gap” and enables financial services companies to onboard clients more easily. 

Second Anthony and his team have launched Thrive Money (https://www.thrivemoneyhq.co.uk/), which in their words solves the following problem: “This lack of financial literacy can have a significant impact on individuals' confidence, autonomy and overall wellbeing. Robert Caplan, Director of First Wealth and his client created Thrive Money as a way to combat this issue, by breaking down barriers to accessible, practical and evidence based financial education.” 

Anthony is a highly motivated business leader and his approach to his businesses is dynamic and exciting. 

Key takeaways: 

• The current financial situation we find ourselves in is the hangover from the financial crisis
• Post RDR the financial services sector the profession went from being too exam focused in Anthony’s opinion and now it has come back to a better balance of financial astuteness, but also engaging clients with additional services such as coaching and mentoring.
• Financial planners are turning clients away due to the costs associated with transactions, and are actively encouraging clients to go and invest with execution only platforms such as Hargreaves Lansdown which is probably not in their best interests in the longer term. Open Advice has been designed to provide a hybrid advice service which can enable clients to get the advice that they need to help them, through what they call “hybrid advice”.
• Find the limits - what are you capable of?
• Be clear about what you are trying to achieve and the reasons behind why you are trying to achieve this.

Visit First Wealth for further details or visit Anthony's LinkedIn profile at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyvillis-financialplanning/.