Greg Moss was plotting his escape from a job he was not enjoying when he set up Eleven.2 Financial Planning.
The escape velocity from earth is about 11.2 kilometres a second, the self-professed geek explains, and the speed he felt he was travelling at towards “a company I really wanted to work for, where I could look after clients properly”.
“Our work is also all about helping clients escape to the lifestyle they want, so it felt like a unifying theme between us and our clients,” he adds.
Moss has worked in the financial advice industry since 2001, including at small independent financial advisers, national IFAs, law firms and accountancies, but none of those made him happy due to a “consistent problem” he found in all companies over how they served their clients.
He says there was too much focus on new business and transactions, and not enough focus on delivering for clients the companies already had.
“I felt repeatedly [I was] just getting clients on board with the promise of this great thing and wanting to deliver it, but being restricted in my ability to deliver it by what was around me,” he explains.
“And I saw this play out in all these different types of businesses, the same sort of trends, and in the end I set up on my own out of sheer frustration.”
Quality over quantity
It was a similar story in job interviews at advice companies, even so-called new model firms, where the conversations quickly became "about the assets that I could bring with me”. So in the end he decided the risk of getting it wrong for his clients yet again was too high and he had to set up his own company.
Eleven.2 Financial Planning, founded in late 2019, is part of the Sense Network. Moss prides himself on his focus on quality over quantity. He has not set himself any growth targets and says he has taken all the “best bits” from the companies he has worked with instead.
“The first thing was no compromises. So the best larger firms that I've been at, if you look behind the scenes at what they're using, there's nothing that a small firm like me can't use if you don't cut corners,” he says.
“And, I was always very sure that I didn't want to cut corners, so I wanted to have the best investment solution that I've ever had at a firm that I worked for, which I have ... and the tech stack as well.
“I wanted to make sure that we used the best platform technology that I'd used ... the very best cash flow modelling software ... So I'm very clear at the outset that I just wanted to use all these components that were the best of breed in these areas and bring them together behind the scenes.”
