Innovative Financial Advisors was founded in 2009 above a stationer’s on Lombard Street by three colleagues who’d grown tired of an industry that confused complexity with sophistication. We set out to build a small firm that did fewer things, better.
Today we look after £420m+ for 2,400 UK households, from first-time savers to multi-generational estates. We’re still independent, still fee-only, and still answering our own phones.
Every household we look after has a single, named adviser who knows their plan inside out — and a chartered colleague reviewing every recommendation. Below, the senior team you’re most likely to meet.
Co-founder · CFP™ · Chartered FCSI
Eleanor leads our retirement and estate practice. Before founding the firm she spent eleven years at a private bank advising entrepreneurial families. She still chairs every quarterly investment committee.
Co-founder · Chartered FCSI · CTA
James heads the firm’s corporate and tax-planning practice. A Chartered Tax Adviser by training, he leads on director pensions, EMI schemes and intergenerational structures.
Co-founder · CFA Charterholder
Anjali runs the firm’s investment practice and discretionary portfolio service. She joined from a London asset manager where she ran multi-asset funds for charities and endowments.
Retirement Adviser · CFP™
Mortgage & Protection · CeMAP
Estate Planner · STEP TEP
Corporate Adviser · ACA
Investment Manager · CFA
Junior Adviser · Dip PFS
Paraplanner · APP
Eleanor Holt, James Morrow and Anjali Patel open a one-room office above a stationer’s on Lombard Street with a single goal: independent, fee-only advice for UK households.
We pass our first major milestone with 380 households on the books. Our quarterly review process — still in use today — is codified.
The firm is awarded Chartered Status by the CISI — held by fewer than 8% of UK advisory firms. We move to our current premises at 17 Lombard Street.
Eleanor and James publish The Long View, a plain-English guide to UK retirement planning. Profits are donated to the StepChange Debt Charity, where they still are today.
We build our own secure client portal — no third-party SaaS, no data sharing. Every document, valuation and meeting note in one place.
Assets under advice cross £400m across 2,400 households. We promote three new partners from within and recruit our first dedicated tax-planning team.
Twelve advisers, four paraplanners, two operations colleagues, and one promise that hasn’t changed in seventeen years: clear advice, fairly charged, for the long view.
Your first conversation with us is complimentary, confidential, and entirely without obligation. We’ll listen, ask, and send a short summary of what we heard. That’s it.