Thomas Young and Stacey Body, co-founders of acquisitive hybrid advice start-up Aventur, spoke to Financial Planning Today about the challenges of building their own technology, what they learnt from former roles at Fairstone and SJP, and why they believe hybrid advice is the future.

Financial Planning Today: What lessons did you learn in your former roles at Fairstone and SJP respectively that drove you to start up Aventur?

Thomas Young and Stacey Body: Perhaps how little technology is used in the wider financial advice market, and that so much is still being done manually, which is really expensive for clients. We wanted to build our own systems from the ground up allowing us to significantly reduce fees, and allow a far wider group of people to access financial advice. By using technology in a smart way we want to increase understanding and control and the service that clients want to see.

FPT: Why did you choose a hybrid advice model?

Thomas Young and Stacey Body: We feel hybrid advice is what clients want going forward. We are also looking to implement a self-service offering and a private client offering, all of which adds up to helping as many people as possible, something we feel is missing from the wider market.

FPT: How much of your advice process is automated?

Thomas Young and Stacey Body: Currently 75%, but we are working hard to have that to 95% by the end of the year - leaving our planners to spend all of their time on the actual giving of advice.

FPT: How difficult was it getting the right process in place?

Thomas Young and Stacey Body: This has been a difficult process, made harder by how behind providers are, technology-wise. Few are wishing to offer things like API’s, and some are still refusing to use email and insisting on sending information through the post.

FPT: In April you acquired South Woodford-based IFA JPSL Financial Services. Do you have plans to acquire more Financial Planning firms?

Thomas Young and Stacey Body: We can't go into too much detail currently as everything is confidential, but we are engaged in conversations with a number of firms and are very excited about our plans for the next 12 months

We can acquire firms of any size or shape, the beauty of our tech and setup is that it can be applied to firms of any size or client type!

FPT: Aventur is now a year old. What unexpected challenges have you faced so far?

Thomas Young and Stacey Body: Like many businesses, Covid has had a big impact on how we thought we would run our business. But, luckily for us, it also demonstrated the need for the technology that we have created. One of the biggest challenges we have faced is growing our team and conducting interviews online rather than face-to-face, and ensuring the team is happy and working well together. It has been a learning curve for us, but we are now comfortable with this being the new normal.

FPT: What are your growth plans for the next five years?

Thomas Young and Stacey Body: We are heavily investing in technology and will continue to merge good quality adviser firms and advisers with us. We are a B-corp Pending certified organisation too, so part of our business goals is to build a business to help society and the environment in general, not just build profits for our shareholders.  We are also working on our own platform offering which should allow us to cut costs further for investors

Thomas Young was formerly managing director and IFA at Essex-based advice firm Brindle House Financial Services. He also spent two years as operations manager and financial adviser at Quality Advisers, which was a partner of the Fairstone Group up to 2016. Previous roles also include creating an outsourced Paraplanning business, Pure Paraplanning, initially designed for use by Charles Derby Advisers.

Stacey Body has a background in investing in technology start-ups. Former roles include investment positions at Startup Giants and CEO of St James’ Place partner practice Chapter Place Associates. He is also the chairman of angel investment group The Lockheed Group.

Aventur combines traditional financial advice with education and automated machine learning to provide low-cost financial advice.