Our Mission

To empower and enable financial planners.

Find out more Our culture

Our mission for the industry

To provide the best support services around.

Internally, we want to provide financial planners, of all shapes and sizes, with the best support services around. We want to empower and enable them to focus on providing the ultimate service to their clients; while we take care of the rest. We want to keep pushing financial services forward, helping develop it into a profession, understood and acknowledged by other professional services. And we want to do it all with a smile on our faces.

Our mission for the wider world

A future in finance.

Externally, we want to shout about how brilliant a career in finance is! It is such an under-represented career, and we are passionate about highlighting the many amazing paths and options that are available in financial services, to encourage people from all walks of life to choose finance as their future.

Our Story

We’re proud of our history and take great pleasure in sharing our journey so far.

2009

Para-Sols was created on 1st June 2009 by Founder & Director, Cathi Harrison. She believed the industry would benefit from an outsourced solution – one where advisers had access to much needed paraplanning support on a flexible basis and without the long-term commitment.

2010

Cathi was twice hailed for her bravery in sacrificing a secure job in the midst of a recession to go it alone and was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year at both the Women into the Network Awards (WIN) and Shell LiveWIRE – her first two of many more awards which now fill our trophy cabinet.

2011

As the reputation of Para-Sols began to grow and demand took off, Jo Campbell joined as the first full-time, permanent employee, to help take business to the next level. Today, Jo is Chief Operations Officer and is responsible for overseeing every part of operations and ensuring that original service remains in operation today.

2012

Now qualified as a Chartered and Certified Financial Planner, Cathi was awarded her first industry related award – Paraplanner of the Year at the Professional Adviser Awards.

2013

With an ever-increasing client list, we embraced our company value of ‘Innovation’ and designed and built our own bespoke case management system. Rise© was launched, improving our efficiency and giving our clients full transparency on their projects and their account status.

2014

Cathi is appointed to the board of the Personal Finance Society (PFS) which marks the first ever Paraplanner representation to the board and Cathi’s first official role outside of the company. She later finishes her term in 2017.

2015

It was this year that Kim Binks, our Chief Commercial Officer today, joined what was the growing Para-Sols brood in a newly created role, designed to drive new business and enhance relations with existing, new and future clients. We also launch our first ‘Para-Pub’ (which we later renamed to The Tunstall Arms) as a team who champion a ‘work hard, play hard’ mantra.

2016

Continuing to build up the trophy cabinet, Jo Campbell wins Paraplanner of the Year at the Money Marketing awards.

2017

Natalie Bell, our Chief Engagement Officer today, joined Cathi, Jo and Kim on the leadership team and with a collective aspiration to take the business to the next stage of growth. First on the list was to overcome our own recruitment challenges and we launched the first paraplanning specific graduate training programme – The Grad Scheme. In the first half of the year, the team increased to 17 and moved to larger premises.

2018

Now with 7 years’ experience with Para-Sols, we knew only too well the frustrations our clients faced navigating their compliance needs. Believing there was a more efficient, common-sense way to approach regulation, Cathi launched a new business – Apricity Compliance – to offer firms a positive compliance experience, supported by bespoke RegTech system which helped compliance come naturally to their firm.

2019

Responding to even more client frustrations and also off the back of our successful graduate training scheme, in 2019 we launched a third business – The Art of Finance. Designed specifically for those looking to get into, or further develop, their career in financial services through a range of practical skills and exam support, it was a training solution like no other in financial services. We also launched The Verve Group to the adviser world too – what was originally an umbrella brand that brought together the three successful businesses, all offering a different outsourced support service to financial advisers. .

2020

The year the world closed down, but The Verve Group world opened up! With the Covid-19 crisis hitting hard in March, we launched the #Project2030 initiative, to refocus what was then our 10 year goal and bring it to life in just a matter of months whilst the world went to sleep. Teams in the businesses across The Verve Group jumped straight into pivoting, rebuilding and expanding our services to make them fit for purpose in the new world. We launched all our efforts to the wider world in June 2020 via a livestream broadcast – the first financial services had seen – and was later awarded a national ‘Pivot’ award.

2021

We kicked off 2021 with a whopping 50 team members, having almost doubled in size during the previous year. Ever determined to achieve our mission at The Verve Group – to shout about careers in financial services and those who’d otherwise never consider it – the impact of Covid-19 presented the opportunity to launch our ‘We Are Change’ initiative, offering free training to those unemployed. And from that, The Verve Foundation our not for profit was launched. We also held our first annual conference and awards – Evolution!

The Verve Group Logo Timeline
The Verve Group Logo Timeline

2022

A big year for The Verve Group, one in which our family of businesses finally took the huge step and consolidated into one. As a group of businesses that offered such complementary services to financial advisers and planners, it made sense to streamline our offer and make our services more accessible for new and existing clients.

2023

And here we are, 2023. Never ones to slow down, we’re currently knees deep in ‘tech’nically one of our most exciting projects yet (see what we did there 😉) so watch this space for something big coming soon…

Values and behaviours

Creating a team guided by our company values.

We’re incredibly proud of our values and have invested a great deal of time and resource in to developing a framework to underpin every element of who we are as individuals, and who we are collectively across the group. How we approach recruitment, how we do business with clients and how we interact as a team are all guided by our company values.

Our culture

Culture is everything at The Verve Group, and we strive to make our staff feel at home, even when they are at work.

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Teambuilding

Every quarter, we come together as a team for a spot of teambuilding and to take stock and reflect on our recent successes as well as sharing any company-wide updates. June and December in particular are celebratory in fashion as we celebrate our company birthday and embrace the approaching festive season!

Health and Wellbeing

We also have a Health & Wellbeing programme – Vitality, which encompasses all our staff initiatives. We’re all fans of a little physical competitive challenge and aren’t strangers to muddy bootcamps and exercise marathons, most of which are generally in the name of charity.

And so much more…

All that plus an infinite supply of snacks, beanbags and our own pub – sounds like a great place to work, right? That’s because it is!

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