Big Day Out 2022

Mike is a driver and survivor of platform mergers, migrations and RDR and held senior roles at Skandia and Old Mutual Wealth. He now works with platforms, advisers, banks and asset managers to help them create and communicate in a way that’s a little less corporate and a little more human.

Over the last 25 years, Chris Baigent-Reed has earned a stellar reputation as a dedicated and passionate Financial Services specialist.

As the founder and business owner of Jigsaw Tree, Chris always looks to achieve the best possible outcome for her clients and ensures they are always the key priority. Her honest approach is seen throughout the firm's delivery of its services to the advice firms it works with.

Les leads the M&G Wealth Technical Team working to maintain their position as one of the most widely respected technical support units in financial services.

A fellow of the PFS, Les spends his time reading, writing and speaking about pensions, tax and trusts to our internal stakeholders, press, paraplanners and financial advisers.

Sian is a chartered paraplanner and director at Plan Works. She's also co-founder and mentor at The Paraplanner Club and a CISI Paraplanner Interest Group member.

Mel is a certified and chartered financial planner and has worked in the field of compliance for over 20 years. Mel is Director and founder of CATS. Mel formed CATS in 2005 after realising that Financial Advisers firms had a need for a Compliance Support company that rolled up their sleeves and got involved to take away the stress of managing a business whilst ensuring they were complying with the regulator.

James graduated from Leeds University in 1990 with a degree in Economic History. James qualified as an Associate of the Pensions Management Institute in 1994 and became a Fellow in 2004. He is also a qualified Chartered Financial Planner and an Associate of the Personal Finance Society. During the 13 years prior to joining Barnett Waddingham in 2015, James held pension technical roles with two Yorkshire-based firms of Independent Financial Advisers.

Melissa has a wealth of experience in the financial services sector – built up largely through working with the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) since 2012.

She has spoken at a number of HSBC conferences on the subject of successful networking, BIBA conference on 'Personalities and Persuasion' and CII Network Conference on 'Making yourself memorable' and the Personal Finance Society's Purely Paraplanning Conference on 'The Three Habits of Highly Effective Paraplanners' and 'How to make your communication stick' and 'How to get faster responses without chasing'.

Sarah is a Chartered Financial Planner and Fellow of the CII/PFS and am currently working as a Senior Paraplanner at Mazars Financial Planning in Poole. She has been working as a paraplanner for more than six years and have extensive knowledge in investments, pensions, trusts and estate planning.

After amassing great experience since 2013 as an Administrator with Four Oaks, Tilney and Plan Works, Kimberley returned to Four Oaks in June 2021 and, in January this year, was appointed as a junior paraplanner –her first role entirely dedicated to paraplanning.

Brian has been in the financial services industry for over 35 years. He joined Transact in December 1999 shortly before its launch. Here he
provided input into the development the tax wrapper functionality on the system whilst establishing a technical tax support function for financial advisers. He is now responsible for the team providing support to both advisers and the business.

Jonny has gained nearly 20 years experience in Financial Services from a number of different roles in advising, compliance and paraplanning (both in house and outsourced). Jonny currently heads up the team at LIFT-Financial in Cheshire. Jonny is passionate about all things financial planning, with a particular interest in how technology can be used to drive efficiencies and better communication with clients.

Coach and facilitator Becca Timmins has not only worked as a paraplanner in the past but – these days – is director of operations at financial planning practice Emery Little.