IFW Annual Conference 2023

This event is dedicated to the increasingly important topic of money and fulfilment.

The IFW Annual Conference “Invest in Wellbeing” returns for 2023!

Welcome to the fourth IFW Conference titled “Invest in Wellbeing” and the first as the Institute for Financial Wellbeing.

We’re returning to Bristol for our next conference on 23rd May 2023! Although we’re continuing to run our monthly events online via Zoom, this is our opportunity to catch up with each other face to face and meet our members in person.

We’re back at The Bristol Hotel and you are also invited to join us at the same venue the night before for a social gathering. This is very informal and last year was a great chance to network and make new connections.  Accommodation can be booked directly with the hotel – please quote IFW Conference when booking as we have already reserved some bedrooms in case these are required.

There promises to be a packed agenda covering a range of inspirational subjects from speakers alongside with an increased number of opportunities for discussions, socialising and networking.  We’re repeating the structure of last year’s conference so we’ll have several keynote speakers plus additional speakers facilitating and leading breakout discussions, so you can choose what you’d like to watch and listen to.

Speakers & facilitators include:

  • Paul Dolan – Keynote – Professor of Behavioural Science – Happiness by Design
  • Nick Elston – Keynote & Inspirational Speaker on Mental Health – Money and Mental Health: The Chaos and the Conflict
  • Clemence Chatelin – Keynote – ESG Integration Manager at CCLA Investments – Sustainability Bootcamp: Getting Real About Sustainability with Your Clients
  • Dr Thomas Mathar – Keynote Aegon UK Ltd – Guiding Clients to Their Future Self
  • Martha Lawton – Keynote – Financial Coach and Educator
  • Alex Whitson – Keynote – VouchedFor – How Can Embracing the Consumer Duty Drive Your Bottom Line?
  • Chris Budd – Keynote – The IFW’s Founder
  • Charlie Goodman – Employee Benefits Collective LLP: Workplace Financial Wellbeing breakout session
  • Patrick Luong – Philanthropy breakout session
  • Kerry Seymour – Neuroscience and client behaviour breakout session
  • Julie New – Client grief and recovery breakout session

Our ambition for this event is to create an open community of like-minded financial services professionals to meet and share ideas, and for 2023 also network in person.

We’re also running an optional event the night before in Bristol for anyone who would like to meet up in person and enjoy some social interaction, good food and company!

We’ll be running our IFW Awards for the second year, shining a light on some of the members who have helped to make the Institute a vibrant, informative and ever-developing space for discussion and positive change. The awards will be presented by our members, for our members.

This year we are supporting two charities:

inHope has been working for over 30 years to help people in need of support, by offering food, shelter and support, whilst seeking to help people with their employability, life skills and housing.  inHope has a vision of communities where everybody can reach their potential, free from injustice and insecurity.

Hollow Heart aims to give people the confidence to start difficult conversations sooner. Piers Stacey launched the charity after leaving the Royal Marines and Royal Navy and finding himself struggling with anxiety and anger. He sought help and came up with the idea of creating a pin to wear that demonstrates an openness to talking about mental health.

Who is this conference for?

This is a conference open to all. We want the debate about money and happiness to involve everyone.

Whether you are a financial adviser, coach, planner, paraplanner, practice manager, fintech startup, product provider, marketing expert, charity or just an interested party, the IFW will help you to help your clients achieve a fulfilling relationship with money.

It is also CPD accredited so you can use this event to go towards your annual CPD requirements!  We will add a list of learning outcomes here from our keynote speakers as we receive them, to help you learn more about the professional development you will receive from attending this event.

Non-member tickets are also available to purchase – scroll down to the bottom or click here to purchase.

 

Who is speaking?

Ruth Sturkey, IFW Chair

Compère

Ruth is Chair of the IFW Board and will compere the IFW Conference 2023. Ruth co-founded boutique financial planning firm The Red House, which merged with Paradigm Norton in 2017; she is now a Non Executive Director for the merged firm. She was the host of the podcast ‘Money Espresso; no froth conversations exploring money and life’ where her aim was to get people talking about money and explore how money and business can be a force for good. She also coaches financial planning business owners.  Ruth can be seen regularly presenting at industry events and holds considerable influence within the financial planning profession.

Professor Paul Dolan

Happiness by Design

Paul is Professor of Behavioural Science at the LSE. His main research interests are human behaviour and happiness, and the relationships between them, particularly as they apply to policy. He is author of the bestselling books Happiness by Design and Happy Ever After. He is also host of the Duck / Rabbit podcast about the polarisation problem in our society and is the founder of the Lifetime Wellbeing Cooperative™.

Nick Elston, Inspirational Speaker & Mental Health Engagement Champion

Money and Mental Health: The Chaos and the Conflict

Nick is a high profile and leading inspirational speaker on the lived experience of mental health.

Described as a ‘BIG man, BIG heart, BIG story & BRUTAL honesty!’, ‘Utterly inspirational, absolutely engaging!’ and ’10/10 – a Speaking Masterclass!’ – Nick shares his experiences of mental illness, mental ill-health & breakdown worldwide – through  powerful, inspiring, engaging & emotional talks, offering insights, tools, tips and techniques on how to manage anxiety in life and in business – to implement immediately.

For Nick, his talks are where Mental Health meets Personal Development, focusing not just on what anxiety is, but on what it does – how it stops us living life on our terms & ultimately how it affects our success – by our own definition.

Nick regularly features in the global media, the BBC, industry shows and publications – his talks are delivered to stages, events, boardrooms, businesses, factories, government organisations, schools, universities and establishments worldwide.

Chris Budd, Founder of the Institute for Financial Wellbeing

Keynote session

Chris founded the Institute for Financial Wellbeing, then called the Initiative, in 2019. He is the author of The Financial Wellbeing Book, the second edition of which will be published in Spring 2023. He is also the author of The Eternal Business, and two novels. In 2018 he sold the majority of his financial planning company Ovation Finance Ltd, the company he founded in 2000, to an Employee Ownership Trust. His consultancy, The Eternal Business, helps business owners work out if selling to an Employee Ownership Trust might be their own succession plan. Chris lives in Somerset with his family and too many guitars.

Clémence Chatelin, CCLA

Sustainability Bootcamp – Getting Real About Sustainability with Your Clients

Clémence is responsible for the integration of sustainability into the investment process at CCLA.

Having obtained a Bachelor’s in International Management (China) at SOAS, she discovered her passion for finance and sustainable business. After completing a Master’s in Finance & Investment at the University of Bristol she started her career in financial planning at Paradigm Norton where she developed her knowledge of sustainable investing, before moving into asset management.

In her free time you can find Clémence going all out in the CrossFit gym, horse riding and taking care of her Pharaoh Hound.

Dr Thomas Mathar, Aegon UK

Guiding Clients to Their Future Self

Thomas heads up Aegon UK’s Centre for Behavioural Research, supporting internal and external stakeholders with behavioural research and the application of nudge-theory to help people live their best lives, now and in the future.

Thomas has been with Aegon since 2016, having previously worked in research agencies and government, health, consumer industries and in finance.

Martha Lawton, Squanderlust

Supporting Clients in Times of Vulnerability

Martha is a financial educator and coach who has been helping people understand and use money better for over 15 years. She has facilitated hundreds of workshops on day-to-day money management as well as running awareness raising campaigns and other financial wellbeing projects. Her work has given her a deep insight into people’s emotional and psychological responses to money, which she discusses on her podcast Squanderlust.

Alex Whitson, VouchedFor

Client advocacy

Alex runs VouchedFor, the UK’s largest financial adviser review platform. He is passionate about championing the value of good advice and making it accessible to more people.

Alex’s team recently launched Elevation, a platform that uses insights from over 250,000 client reviews to help improve client experience.

Before joining VouchedFor, Alex was a Managing Director at Haymarket Media Group, overseeing the growth of the company’s global digital and event revenues.

Charlie Goodman, IFW & Employee Benefits Collective LLP

Workplace Financial Wellbeing breakout discussion

Charlie is a Board member at the Institute for Financial Wellbeing and head of the IFW’s Workplace Financial Wellbeing offering.

A partner at the Employee Benefits Collective LLP, Charlie specialises in financial wellbeing in the workplace. He is a qualified IFA, Financial Coach, and Reward Specialist.

Patrick Luong, philanthropist

Philanthropy breakout discussion

Patrick was an award-winning Chartered and Certified Financial Planner with more than ten years’ experience before he turned to the charity sector.

He now advances charitable and philanthropic goals by managing mission-led relationships with YoungMinds’ supporters. In both his professional and personal life, Patrick enjoys conversations about passion, purpose and what’s important to others and connecting people and ideas.

Outside work, Patrick is likely to be running, singing or volunteering. He is a charity trustee, run director for parkrun and has volunteered hundreds of times with community groups around London.

Kerry Seymour, Inspired To Change

Neuroscience breakout discussion

Kerry is a Solution Focused Hypnotherapist and mental health trainer with Inspired To Change.

Kerry works from her online practice in North Somerset, utilising modern neuroscientific research to help people to take control of their life so that they can go from surviving life to thriving in life. She helps her clients to understand how their brain works so that they can get it working with them and rather than against them.

Julie New

Change is forever but the pain doesn’t have to be…

Julie is an experienced personal recovery coach specialising in helping people after difficult and sometimes traumatic life change. Prior to starting her coaching Julie spent 20 years in the NHS as a senior nurse and midwife, she also worked on various pioneering NHS community projects.

Since becoming a professional coach in 2006 she has developed a unique recovery program which has helped many people to reach new fulfilling phases in their lives, which they hadn’t thought possible.

Julie is an author of popular unique personal growth gift books and is a well-known inspirational and motivational wellbeing conference speaker.

Emily Pool, Happy Planet Financial Planning

IFW Awards presenter

independent financial planner Emily Pool is the founder of Happy Planet Financial Planning.

After spending much of her career in the city, and several years working in project finance and then commercial banking, she realised she needed to “help balance people rather than balance sheets.

Emily is passionate about empowering people to invest their wealth in line with their personal values. She believes people will naturally engage more meaningfully with their financial futures by investing ethically and sustainably and will feel more empowered knowing their savings can have a positive impact on global problems. She loves to educate her clients on the difference their investments can make and wants them to truly understand that collectively investors have real power to change the world for the better.

Neil Bage, Shaping Wealth

IFW Awards presenter

Neil is the co-founder of Shaping Wealth, a learning technology platform transforming the human experience of money. He is the Chief Behavioural Officer at #humanfirst financial planning firm Murphy Wealth, and the founder and host of the Bitesize Behaviour Podcast.

Having spent the last 15 years researching human behaviour, Neil has developed a reputation for bridging complex behavioural theory with real-world understanding and application. His talks blend his knowledge of human evolution, psychology and biology with his skill for compelling storytelling, all of which combine to reveal how people make important decisions that will impact their financial health and wellbeing.

Agenda

Our Agenda is being updated regularly; please check back to see additional speakers / sessions. Thank you.

Mobile Agenda coming soon.

Time 23rd May
Morning
09:00-09:15 Registration
09:15-09.20Ruth Sturkey, The IFW
Welcome.
09:20-09.50Keynote speaker - Nick Elston
Money and Mental Health: The Chaos and the Conflict
09:50-10:20Breakout discussion with Nick Elston
A discussion will be facilitated on the previous keynote presentation by Nick Elston.
09:50-10:20Breakout discussion with the IFW Alumni
How to implement the tenets of financial wellbeing
10:20-10.50Keynote speaker - Clemence Chatelin
Sustainability Bootcamp – Getting Real About Sustainability with Your Clients
10:50-11:05Break
11:05-11:35Breakout discussion with Clemence Chatelin
A discussion will be facilitated on the previous keynote presentation by Clemence Chatelin.
11:05-11:35Breakout discussion with Charlie Goodman
Charlie will provide insights into Workplace Financial Wellbeing.
11:35-12:05Keynote speaker - Dr Thomas Mathar, Aegon UK
Guiding Clients to Their Future Self
12:05-12:35Breakout discussion with Dr Thomas Mathar from Aegon
A discussion will be facilitated on the previous keynote presentation.
12:05-12:35Breakout discussion with Patrick Luong
A talk and discussion led by Patrick on Philanthropy.
12:35-13:15Lunch / Networking
Afternoon
13:15-13:30IFW Awards presented by Emily Pool and Neil Bage
13:30-14:15Keynote speaker - Professor Paul Dolan, including Q&A Happiness by Design
14:15-14:45Keynote speaker - Martha Lawton
Supporting Clients in Times of Vulnerability
14:45-15:15Breakout discussion with Martha Lawton
A discussion will be facilitated on Martha's previous keynote presentation.
14:45-15:15Breakout discussion with Kerry Seymour
A talk and discussion led by Kerry on the impact of neuroscience on client meetings .
15:15-15:30 Comfort Break
15:30-16:00Keynote speaker - Alex Whitson - VouchedFor
How Can Embracing the Consumer Duty Drive Your Bottom Line? What 2023's Data Tells Us
16:00-16:30 Breakout discussion with Alex Whitson
A discussion will be facilitated on Alex's previous keynote presentation.
16:00-16.30Breakout discussion with Julie New
Change is forever but the pain doesn't have to be.
16:30-17:00Keynote speaker – Chris Budd
17:00Event closes

How much does it cost?

IFW Members

Standard Member tickets: £249 +VAT.

Non-members

Standard Non-Member tickets: £275 + VAT.

 

Get involved

The initiative will be member-led. We’d love to hear from individuals and organisations who would like to get involved.