In this edition of The Advice Podcast, NMA reporter James Fitzgerald speaks with the managing director of Manchester-based advice firm Wetherall’s Financial Planning, James Wetherall.

Wetherall talks about his new guide which provides tips to help advice firm principles fine, hire and train graduate financial planners.

The guide, which contains articles and contributions from Zero Support’s Phil Young, and Sandringham CEO Tim Sargisson, among others, details why hiring young people is key to helping narrow the advice gap, and how principals can benefit from injecting young blood into their firms.

For this edition of Advice Around the World, we discuss the importance of financial literacy in India, and how planners can use their online presence to make a difference to a mass audience.

Preeti Zende is one of India’s leading financial planners. For starters, she offers a fee-based and client centric advice service in a market that is largely propped up by advisers earning commission through investment sales. Besides this, she has developed an impressive following on the popular question and answer website Quora, amassing over 5.5 million page views in the process. This is a staggering achievement, so we ask the founder of Apana Dhan Financial Services how she has built this online presence, and why she was inspired to do it. Zende explains that with no social security or safety net for individuals in India, the need for proper financial assistance is paramount. Bad decisions within such an environment can be catastrophic. Zende gives us insights into how she is breaking this barrier down and communicating financial themes and information in terms that people can actually understand.

In this episode of The Advice Podcast, NMA reporter James Fitzgerald speaks to the chief executive of consolidator Truinvest, Mark Smith, about how his business not only survived but thrived during last year’s multiple lockdowns.

Smith makes clear that consolidators who only buy firms to increase their AUM, and who do not take into account their new clients’ needs, are at risk of failing in the long term.

This, he says, is because if AUM is all a consolidator is after, and if client service levels drop post-acqusition, then acquired advisers and clients will, more often than not, walk out the door with their assets in tow.

Welcome to the Anthropocene: the epoch of the Earth's geological history defined by the impact of humanity. The UK government is is talking up its eco credentials now, but this week's guest from fund management, Bryn Jones, recounts meetings in Westminster where the very idea of a green bond was roundly dismissed. The Rathbone Ethical Bond Fund manager meets futurist Mark Stevenson and New Model Adviser editor Will Robins to discuss how fixed-income investors can be an effective force for change.

IWP's chief executive David Inglesfield speaks to NMA reporter Laura Purkess about IWP and its future plans. They discuss how the businesses chooses firms to acquire and its due diligence process, its relationship with the FCA, the acquisition of Bartholomew Hawkins Asset Management and the launch of the IWP adviser academy later this year.

The last few years have seen a growing number of wildfires around the world.

As well as major fires in Australia and California we have started to see more fires across Europe. A recent University of Reading report found that there was an increased risk of wildfires in the UK. There have even been fires in the Arctic.

We are joined by Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at the department of mechanical engineering of Imperial College London, to discuss how companies can counter fire risk, and how investors can help.

Noel Butwell is CEO, adviser platforms at Standard Life Aberdeen. He looks after Wrap, Elevate and the adviser business 1825 and has big ambitions to number one platform of choice for advice firms. That, Butwell tells New Model Adviser editor Will Robins, would involve deep integration with back offices and to only pay for what is used. But could an ESG 'look through' be needed too? A similar 'pick and mix' approach will reshape its advice offer as well.

In this edition of the NMA podcast, reporter James Fitzgerald speaks with Quilter Financial Planning investment director, Rick Eling, about the firm's new mandatory ESG assessment rules.

Eling also claims that advisers who aren't taking ESG investing seriously will fall behind the pack as client demand for this area of investment advice will only become more popular.

In this episode, reporter Laura Purkess speaks to Dave Chaplin, CEO of ContractorCalculator, about the reforms to IR35 off-payroll working rules, which came into effect on 5 April 2021. They discuss why the reforms went ahead, what contractors and businesses should do to prepare and what the future holds for the contractor market.

Online investment scams are on the rise, and there is an ongoing debate about who is responsible for taking them down.

In this edition of the New Model Adviser podcast, reporter James Fitzgerald speaks with Tim Fassam, who is director of government relations at the Personal Investment Management & Financial Advice Association (Pimfa)

Fassam tells Fitzgerald that the government needs to seriously consider including online financial harms into its bill, otherwise Google and Facebook will continue to turn a blind eye to scams, and savers will be the ones who continue to lose out.