Over the last 12 months, Berry & Oak’s focus has been the wellbeing of its team and clients. It has also concentrated on bringing in efficiencies, streamlining its processes and developing the team. The firm has worked very closely with its back-office system, Intelliflo, to automate its processes and use the links between Intelliflo and other providers such as identity checks, risk-profiling tools and suitability reports. Its Intelliflo adviser score is 660 out of 700, which shows Berry & Oak is maximising the use of the system and has high-quality client data and successful automated valuations.

The firm has increased its regular client contact programme, making regular phone calls to clients to check they are OK and sending small gifts such as a pocket charm to brighten their days. It has been using technology to ensure it can still offer the best service it can to support its clients through the pandemic running meetings and webinars by zoom, transcribing meeting notes into a word document using Otter.ai, and increased usage by their clients of the personal finance portal, to share documents, secure messaging and bank balances using open banking.

Berry & Oak has been working on a brand-new website that is due to go live in April 2021 along with a refreshed client newsletter and the launch of its new charity of the year.

The focus of the next 12 months will be to grow and continue to invest in and develop the team. It will be recruiting a graduate to the Berry & Oak Graduate Training scheme and is looking for the right paraplanner to join the team.

The firm has continued to support the growth of the profession, with both Sarah and Andrew being mentors to a number of participants. Sarah also sits on the Personal Finance Society Power Panel. Berry & Oak is very proud to be helping support the Verve ‘we are change’ initiative by financially supporting a trainee through their exams, which will hopefully lead to them joining the profession.

Berry & Oak won the best Northern firm in New Model Adviser’s 2020 awards.