Planner achieves PFS Fellowship at 24

He has become one of the youngest FPFS planners in the country.

Many planners do not achieve FPFS until their 40s or 50s.

Mr Fitzgerald joined the financial services sector when he was 19 and completed his diploma within a year, moving on to the advanced diploma.

He obtained his FPFS recently at 24, five and a half years since starting in the profession.

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He said: “I’ve wanted to be a financial adviser since I joined the profession. As I was quite young when I started I found one of the potential obstacles to some clients was my young age. Although I saw it as a benefit myself, I know I am quite young compared to the average age of a financial adviser.

“By obtaining the FPFS qualification, it demonstrated I knew my stuff and was not as green as my age might make me out to be.”

Mr Fitzgerald said the study had been hard work but worthwhile.

He said: “The exams have been challenging and time consuming, as there are times where you lose the drive to keep going, but I am very glad I’ve been able to complete them in the time that I have had.”

He said his employer Chase de Vere had been “very supportive” in helping him to achieve his qualifications and he said he was thankful that his managers pushed him to get as many exams done as possible before he became a working financial adviser because he knew there could be less time to study once he’d started advising.

Mr Fitzgerald joined the Financial Planning profession in his teens after deciding university was not the right choice for him.

He said: “During a gap year I did some work experience at Chase de Vere to give me a taste of what the financial services industry looked like and I was rather taken with it.

“To get my foot in the door, I applied for the position of apprentice Paraplanner at St James’s Place and completed my diploma within a year. I then moved to Chase de Vere to become a Paraplanner when there was an opening  and pushed on to complete the advanced diploma. The pandemic hit in 2020, which delayed my transfer to becoming a financial adviser initially, but by January 2021 was able to start advising clients.”

In terms of his ambitions he said he just wanted to be, “the best adviser I can be to my clients in these challenging times.”

Stephen Kavanagh, chief executive of Chase de Vere, said: “At Chase de Vere we place a huge focus on supporting employees and helping them to develop their careers with us. We have many talented younger advisers, and prospective advisers, who are focused on becoming highly qualified and providing the best possible service for their clients.

“James is a great example of this. He has worked really hard to achieve Fellowship status, is already receiving fantastic feedback from his clients and I have no doubt that he has a very bright future ahead.”

Gill White, chief customer officer at the Chartered Insurance Institute, said “ We congratulate James for attaining Fellowship status during such trying times as one of our youngest candidates. No matter what your current level of qualification is, we are proud to offer the opportunity to earn while you learn, and thereby further improve customer outcomes in the future.”

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