Last week, we saw the full Verve team come together for our annual Kick-Off event for 2023. This tradition started last year, to help the team collaborate during a time of impending change and growth, and because of its success back then, the event is now a firm favourite in the team calendar.  

The day provided an opportunity to bring everyone together in one room (which doesn’t happen so often with our remote and hybrid working set up!) to spend the day learning, sharing ideas and reflecting on the year ahead – along with some well needed wellbeing sessions! We structured the day with three key sessions, giving updates from different areas of the business, followed by a complementary interactive activity-based session to get the team thinking and encourage co-design on new ideas and solutions. Our people really are our biggest asset, and we always want to involve them in the co-creation process of what the future of Verve looks like as we grow and adapt to the evolving world around us. 

The Verve Vision

We kicked off the day with ‘The Verve Vision’ from our Founder & CEO, Cathi, who laid out the refined vision for Verve and where the business focus will be for the coming year. We’ve gone through lots of change internally – and as Cathi has mentioned in her recent Eclipse, we’re currently in the process of consolidating all our brands under the one business, The Verve Group. The benefits of this are ten-fold but namely streamlining our services to enhance the client experience and culturally align everything we do internally for the team.  (More to be announced on this later, so make sure you’re signed up to our weekly newsletter to be the first to know!)  

The Verve Proposition

Our next plenary session was ‘The Verve Proposition’ with Chief Operating Officer, Jo, who took us through an update on our Verve services and how our propositions are designed to meet the needs of advisers, large and small, as they are navigating the changing landscape of financial services right now. From supporting them through mergers and acquisitions, building resource capacity within their firms, training their teams, delivering compliance support and anything else they might need – we have a team of experts ready to help at every stage of the business life cycle.  

The Verve Tech

Our final session was ‘The Verve Tech’ with Chief Technology Officer, Peter, who gave us an engaging update on the progression of our new tech system. It’s well underway, set for launch later this year, and is incredibly exciting for the team to see the features come to life. Our development team are working hard to create something pretty special to help advisers run their business as efficiency and compliant as possible.  

The day was interspersed with lots of wellbeing activities to get our mind and body moving- including yoga, desk therapy, the chance to get some fresh air and lots more. We also got creative with a crafty session, followed by a Verve-style Pub Quiz with a few beverages to wrap up the day (because it wouldn’t be a Verve event without it, right?!). 

Our Annual Charity for 2023

Each year, our team put forward personal submissions for our annual charity partner and on the day, we all voted for our winner. We will support the chosen charity throughout the year through various challenges, events and fundraising efforts as a team.  

The joint runners up were St Teresa’s Hospice, Alzheimer’s Society and PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide. However, there could be only one winner (as Simon Cowell would say) and this year’s annual charity will be Macmillan Cancer Support  

Kick-Off events are always a great way to start the year and a perfect excuse to get the team together to build on new friendships and encourage new thinking. We have lots of activity outputs to make our way through now, but it’s safe to say we’re excited for the year ahead. Let’s do this…  

Naomi Graham, Communications Lead.