Serving the Teesside Business Community | 41
The business experts
Offering businesses, business owners and directors a full review of their finances has been a pivotal area of the Vintage growth story over the past four or five years.
It’ s an area where its skilled and highly qualified team excels.
Vintage provides financial advice to an increasing number of businesses, including wellknown local firms Endeavour Partnership and Erimus Insurance Brokers, plus others further afield.
“ We offer a full financial review for businesses,” says managing partner Sam Tate.“ We meet clients and analyse their business protection and pension needs, examine what they have in place, how best to utilise their business finances and consider any potential areas of vulnerability.”
Sam Tate with financial planner Anthony Long, one of Vintage Financial’ s pensions specialist.
Financial planner Anthony Long is one of the firm’ s specialists in this field who provides high quality pension and investment planning advice to an ever-growing bank of individuals, while he has also been responsible for the set up and ongoing management of many group pension schemes.“ Since Anthony came on board three years ago, his expertise in this area has really allowed us to step up and make a real impact” explains Sam.
“ We’ ve found that businesses have really benefited from having an expert to analyse their business needs from a protection and pension point of view, and offer bespoke, independent and high quality advice within these areas.”
“ We’ ve achieved so much over the last few years but our new premises put us onto a whole new plain”
– Sam Tate
“ I was brought back in specifically to bring in new business and to help develop our existing strategies,” he explains.“ We wanted growth but were restricted from a resource point of view as Paul and Steven were consumed in ensuring that our existing clients were given the same outstanding level of service Vintage has provided from day one.
“ The financial market has transformed beyond recognition since Paul and my dad launched the business 28 years ago.
“ So one of the things we looked at were areas where we felt we were missing opportunities. Even just a few years ago we were almost solely looking after individuals.“ Whilst we’ ve continued to grow and improve our services to individual clients, we also spent more time going out there to win new business and started to provide more key man insurance and business protection.”
But Sam, who is now responsible for the firm’ s strategy, planning, marketing and core management duties, insists that what has been achieved to date is just the start.
Vintage is actively looking to recruit high quality Chartered Financial Planners to work alongside its existing team of 10, with their spacious new headquarters providing plenty of additional office space for new arrivals.
The firm is also leading advanced talks with National Skills Group to launch Teesside’ s first Financial Services Apprenticeship Scheme, with plans already in place to provide opportunities for the firm’ s first two apprentices, one focusing on paraplanning and the other on financial services administration.
Sam adds:“ We’ ve achieved so much over the last few years but our new premises put us onto a whole new plain.
“ Within a relatively short space of time we’ ve achieved Chartered status – which is the gold standard of excellence and integrity within the financial sector – and substantially increased our turnover.
“ We want to continue to be known for the exceptional quality of our service and as Teesside’ s elite chartered financial firm.
“ We’ re very happy to be judged on our results and performance, and our growth will be managed in a way that these things are never compromised. While other firms talk, Vintage do.
“ It’ s been a slow burn over nearly three decades but we’ re now positioning ourselves for further growth. Exciting times are ahead.”
Team strength gives Vintage the advantage
When it comes to offering a wealth of financial advice and experience, few can match Vintage.
Having recently achieved a Diploma in Financial Planning, Vintage has promoted Helen Weatherhead from paraplanner to a new role as one of the firm’ s four financial planners.
Helen’ s appointment has strengthened the financial planning team, which is headed up by Steven Hodgson. As well as being a Chartered financial planner, partner Steven is also a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society, the most prestigious position within the industry.
“ Helen is a long-established part of the Vintage team and has always been a very valuable member of the staff from a support point of view but she’ s now very much part of the front of house team and will make an outstanding contribution,’’ says Steven.
“ Despite our ambitions for further growth, we pride ourselves on stability and have always enjoyed high staff retention. All but two of the team – Helen included- have been with the company for at least 10 years.”