About Duncan Ellis

With over 20 years of experience advising successful individuals and small businesses, I have a clear knowledge of the value that good financial planning can add to a client’s situation. As a result, my clients have a clear understanding of their financial arrangements and how my advice has contributed to them achieving or being on course to achieve their goals.

I aspire to be “the trusted adviser” for my clients by working in tandem with their other professional advisers, such as their accountant or lawyer, to deliver a holistic approach to their affairs.

The clients I advise have differing levels of experience, and are at differing life stages, with some still accumulating wealth whilst others are in retirement and focused on wealth preservation and estate planning strategies. I treat every client I work with as an individual and strive to get to know them and their aspirations and what is important to them. It is only when I understand this that an effective financial planning strategy can be put into place.

My clients find this approach genuinely refreshing, as it allows them to understand their finances with a level of knowledge and “buy-in” that is straightforward, to the point and delivered in a way that is easily digestible. This type of “no-nonsense, no sales talk” approach brings a wealth of benefits to clients and is something that is quite rare in this industry, and I believe makes me different from other financial advisers.

Virtually all my clients are personally referred to me by word of mouth or via a professional introduction. My approach to growing my business has been quite simple: I believe if I do a good job for a client, then they are likely to refer me to a friend or colleague. Nearly everybody needs a good financial adviser but finding someone you trust and feel comfortable with and have total faith in, is surprisingly difficult as people always think they are being “sold to”. I don’t take this approach. I certainly don’t work for free, but I also won’t advise or make a recommendation with a cost associated with it, unless I genuinely feel that your situation will be improved.

In my younger years, I was as an officer in the Royal Marines between 1987 and 1997 when I also qualified as a helicopter pilot. I then changed career direction and left the Armed Forces and moved into the Aviation Insurance Industry when I worked for Sedgwick Aviation Insurance Limited and later Marsh as a Lloyds broker for two years.

I then switched industries again and decided to become a Financial Adviser in 1999 and trained with The Equitable Life Assurance Society before starting my own business in 2001.

Away from work, I enjoy good food and wine, I love most sports and I play a fair amount of golf at the Kent and Sussex coasts. I’m also a father with two teenage children.