The journey begins in earnest (3)

A busy week out meeting members having spoken at the Northern Home Counties Branch on Wednesday and the South Wales Branch yesterday morning. What was particularly encouraging, apart from the tremendous turn out at both venues, was the positive mood of the delegates and the great job that the respective chairmen are doing. This mood seems to be mapping across to other Branches around the country.  This is great news as membership itself starts to increase as Planners think about their Statement of Professional Standing (SPS) and the most relevant organisation to support them now and post 2012.

An extra bonus of attending the Branch meetings apart from catching up with the members is to listen to the other speakers. In Milton Keynes, I listened to David Patterson from DBx tracker speaking about ETFs. Not exactly core subject matter for me although it helped me to remember what a difficult job Financial Planners have compared to me! It was however a really good presentation which was entirely educational and it was very refreshing to see companies working so hard at this. In South Wales we were treated to an excellent presentation by David Bachelor CFP^CM who talked about how he presents Financial Planning with the use of trusts. For people looking at how to change their approach to deliver great ideas and service, David is well worth a listen.

What is really interesting for me is that in general, more members and advisers now seem to be getting engaged with what is really important and valuable. CPD events are time consuming and in many cases cost money. Therefore, the value needs to be assessed pretty quickly. Events need to be relevant and properly accredited so that it is a win for everybody. More members are now using the CPD online platform which is not only easier to find and track stuff, but also going to be invaluable when it comes to auditing the CPD down the track.

IFP events are really taking shape with the first conference of 2012 taking place at the Brewery on the 23^rd Feb. The event has been so popular that we have had to secure a larger room to accomodate the demand. As those booking into the Annual Conference last year found out, when we are saying that there are only a few places left, this is not marketing BS but actually a fact.

On Tuesday we were able to do another session of filming for IFP TV. The main victim on this occasion was Justin Urquhart Stewart who showed why he is so sought after by the real TV - An obvious natural with so many good things to say. IFP TV is nearly ready for the IPod etc and as the quality and quantity of content increases, we are reworking the format to match CPD requirements as well with a Learning Zone. There is already a load of good stuff on there too have a look at and new programmes appearing all the time.

It was good to find out about the bribery act this week when I had a lunch cancelled because the person taking me out had already exceeded their monthly allowance of bribing or something. I didn’t realise that I ate so much, especially in January! Anyway I must remember that excuse for the future.

Rhys and I will be out on the real golf course tomorrow morning to see whether our lessons have paid off and whether the form from the Golf Range can be transferred to the course. Highly unlikely I would think but I shall report back next week. Luckily I’ve had loads of balls given to me for my birthday so should be ok and the weather forecast is good.

Have a great weekend everybody.