A newcomer to NMA’s Top 100 in 2021, LightSide Financial Planning has scored a spot again in 2022 thanks to its culture of continual improvement driven by four core values: empathy, decency, graft and expertise.

Serving to cement the latter is a focus on completing additional qualifications. Director Sean McDermott, one of two chartered financial planners at the firm, has become a certified coach.

Also in 2022, the firm invested in putting its advisers through the ISO 22222 standard and adopted the BS 8577 framework, the only British standard for financial planning and advice businesses, certified by Standards International.

Other developments include revamping suitability reports to make them jargon-free and investing in technology, with the firm adopting Loom to record videos for clients and Calendly to make its services more accessible.

The client journey has been redesigned and two new staff members have been recruited – a technical manager and an executive assistant – taking the total workforce to nine.

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