Ian Brewer is a multiple award-winning, creative innovative financial advice distribution professional who has hands-on experience in online distribution but also is a pioneer in remote financial advice distribution by having invented and developed an award-winning innovative Remote Advice platform. The company is called Lower My Charges .com founded by Ian and Peter Deane an award winning Marketing expert. As the name suggests its aiming to provide a service to lower charges and costs that have been applied to Pensions and Investment products to fund financial advice – LMC plan is to provide financial advice when people need it at a very low cost using a combination of propriety technology and a human adviser. The company has 5 staff and is looking to add another 3 immediately and aim to launch fully in the New Year.
Ian had been involved in setting up several innovative award winning financial services business from scratch including one with Principality Building Society so he had a track record – initially he thought based on past endeavours this would be enough to just pitch to investors and they would back Ian next innovative idea – wrong – Then one day Ian met Ex - MD of JP Morgan who runs a private office for very wealthy individuals – he looked Ian in the eye and said do you have what it takes to drag it up the hill - why don’t you just do it – bootstrap the idea - so Ian did just that by launching a pre register service to educate customers about charges – it was a case of seeing is believing and once the web site was up and explained the story of how charges being applied to Pensions and Investments could damage your wealth this started to resonate with the mass market resulting in thousands of people following us on various social media platforms and pre registering for the service.
We are going to use propriety technology to engage customers on line remotely into personal secure financial advice sessions that gives the same experience if not better than having a meeting face to face. We done this a few times now and each time you learn something new by working out what works and what doesn’t.
We haven’t been going very long but securing a large investment with a very influential investor been one of them – another has been seeing the dream come alive – you can now touch and feel it which has influenced many to come and join us to make a real difference in helping people with their money and personal wealth and wellbeing. Another was being invited on to BBC Moneybox Radio 4 show by no other than Paul Lewis himself.
Accelerated Growth Programme: Its been excellent – Mandy Weston our mentor has helped us receive financial support when needed though the AGP Programme and Welsh Ice have been fantastic thanks to Jamie Mcgowen in creating an environment where start ups get a great boost to succeed and launch their idea. Our plan with further support from our investor’s and the Welsh Government is to create another 75 high quality jobs (salaries of 30k pa plus) in the next 3yrs.
Top Tips:
- If you have an idea it will only remain an idea if you don’t take the first step
- Don’t wait for Investment just do it – drag it up the hill – anything possible if your determined enough
- Its okay to make mistakes but learn from them and adapt quickly
- Surround yourself with positive people – keep away from people who say you cant climb that mountain
- Be yourself and be guided by doing the right thing - have a moral compass and when you have a good team around you look after them and empower them to help you achieve great things.
Further information on the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme.