Interview with Thomas Skinner, Co-Founder and Financial Planning Director at Wealth Management Company: Barnaby Cecil

Barnaby Cecil is a wealth management and financial planning company, based in Highgate, London. We have just celebrated our second birthday. We predominantly work with clients from digital and media companies, such as Facebook and Google and use specialist technology to help them manage their money. We also work with doctors and people who are looking to retire.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
The idea for Barnaby Cecil was born, in the same way many great companies are – on the back on a beer mat, over lunch, in a pub. Co-founder Emma Walker and I both worked for another wealth management company but knew we weren’t on the right path.

I had an idea about setting up a financial planning business, with financial planning at the very heart of the business – using technology to help clients easily manage their wealth and targeting specific audiences to become truly experts in our field.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
One of the biggest changes for us during the pandemic was moving all our meetings online. We already were set up for online working as many of our clients are busy and prefer a phone call or Zoom update. However, we do have some clients who perhaps might be on their own and look forward to coming into our office for that face-to-face interaction, so our challenge was how we gave these people the same level of service and engagement they were used to in the office. For some clients this has worked really well and they will continue to have virtual updates, for others they are looking forward to having meetings in the flesh again.

We are always developing our app to ensure it is the best in the market by taking onboard client feedback. The app has been so useful for clients during the pandemic, as it manages all their paperwork – any documents that need signing, can be done through the app. We have also just launched Navigate – a wealth management and investment proposition with technology doing much of the heavy lifting, which dramatically reduces costs.
 

What can we hope to see from Barnaby Cecil in the future?

 
We are constantly evolving our service and ensuring we are truly experts in our field. The app and our award winning WealthMap tool are always being updated to ensure they offer a world class service for our clients. We are also looking at ways in which we can make financial planning more accessible. We currently donate 10 per cent of our time to people that might not normally use a financial planner but have very complex financial needs. For example, we have just worked with a family who worked for the Salvation Army and we were able to really make a difference to their retirement planning needs.