A merger and accompanying leadership shakeup is hard enough at the best of times, let alone during a global pandemic.

But Covid-19 did not dissuade Quilter Financial Advisers (QFA) managing director, Darren Sharkey, who has pushed ahead with the long-awaited integration of Charles Derby and Lighthouse into Quilter’s national advice business.

New Model Adviser® revealed in April that QFA will now include the acquired Charles Derby and the Lighthouse advice, mortgage and protection businesses, but the integration has been a long time coming.

In this episode of our podcast, reporter James Fitzgerald speaks to Sharkey to find out just how smooth the integration has been for QFA’s advisers, how the national’s new telephone advice system is helping clients in lockdown, and how a business with so many moving parts is managing to improve its advice proposition during the pandemic.