The wealth advisor has added seven advisors and a new hire for risk management in a highly productive lockdown that has seen AuM reach £1 billion this year.

Marking lockdown as good for business, Cheshire-based wealth advisor Equilibrium Financial Planning added eight new staff during the lockdown period, including seven client managers and a senior hire in risk management to bring the headcount to around 90.

Sarah Hammond has joined the advice firm as head of risk and compliance, following almost 12 years at LIFT-Financial, where she was head of paraplanning, and most recently head of risk management.

Hammond has since renamed the compliance team to the best practice team: "'Compliance' doesn't really fit with our four core values. It also isn't very client friendly. If you say that a file is with compliance, it could sound as if something is wrong,” Hammond explained.

Between March and August, Mark Tan, Aleesha Shah, Jo Wall, Lewis Carthew, Rachel Lee, Ryan Etchells, and Jonathan Brusell (some pictured above) joined as client managers.

Sarah Warburton, who steers the firm's culture and hiring practices, said: “We’ve actually had a very successful lockdown period, which we feel has been as a result of our continued focus on our culture and values,” which has in turn "attracted fresh, top-tier talent,” she said.

The group said that hiring in such numbers is a response to rapid growth in its advisory business, with the firm bringing in more assets up until May this year than for the whole of the previous fiscal year. Subsequently, the Wilmslow wealth planner, with offices in Cheshire's sought-after "golden triangle", reached £1 billion in AuM for the first time in 2020 on £10.25 million turnover.

The expansion in general reflects a renewed appetite for financial advice in the wake of the virus, with investors reassessing their tolerance for risk and maybe taking a fresh look at their retirement plans.

Colin Lawson, who founded Equilibrium 25 years ago, welcomed the new personnel, adding: “We’re poised now for our next period of growth, as we hit the ground running for the start of our new fiscal year."