Trainee Financial Adviser — Family-Run Wealth Management Practice
Leeds | Full-time, office-based | Starting salary up to £35,000 + full training pathway
Our client is a long-established, family-run wealth management practice with offices in Leeds. Led by its founder alongside the second generation of the family, the firm looks after time-poor professionals, business owners and families, from the Dales farmer to the city businessman.
The numbers tell you what the culture is like: client retention above 99% and funds under management in excess of £500 million. Clients don't stay with a firm for decades because of clever products. They stay because someone took the time to understand them, explained complex things calmly and clearly, and kept showing up. That's the craft you'll be learning here.
You'll work directly alongside the firm's Principals and Business Development Manager — not filed away in a back office — supporting both existing client relationships and new client enquiries.
Day to day, that means:
- Sitting in on client meetings with the Principals, watching how experienced advisers take a client through a journey — from "I don't really understand my finances" to a clear, confident plan for their future
- Working with the Business Development Manager to engage new prospective clients and prepare for first meetings
- Supporting reviews and ongoing planning for existing clients across retirement, investment, protection, Inheritance Tax and business planning
- Gradually taking ownership of conversations yourself as your knowledge and confidence build
The firm's whole approach is built on communication: direct yet reassuring, tailored to what actually matters to each client. Your development here is as much about soft skills — listening, questioning, explaining, guiding — as it is about technical knowledge. You'll learn how to help a client genuinely understand their finances, not just present them with a report.
The development path
- Structured route towards full adviser status, with study support for your professional qualifications
- Daily exposure to Principals with decades of advice experience and deep, long-standing client relationships
- A genuine progression story: this firm develops its own people rather than buying in advisers
- The variety of a two-office practice serving everyone from business owners and senior executives to farming families
Who this suits
You don't need advice experience. You do need:
- A genuine interest in financial planning and in people — you find other people's lives and goals interesting
- Strong communication instincts: warm, clear, unflustered
- The work ethic to study for qualifications while learning on the job
- Ideally, some client-facing experience (financial services, professional services, or quality client service of any kind)
Why here rather than a big national?
Because in a family firm of this size, you're visible. The people training you are the people whose names are on the door. Your progress isn't a line on a spreadsheet in another city — it's noticed, invested in, and rewarded. And you'll learn advice the way it should be done: patiently, personally, and for the long term.