Suzanne O’Connor

I’m Suzanne O’Connor from Evoke Financial Planning, and I’m an appointed representative of Corbel Partners.

I’ve been with Corbel for 16 years. I started off as directly authorised with them and then moved on to being an appointed representative about five years ago.

Corbel support me with all the compliance, which is invaluable. When you’re running your own practice, it’s such a busy time, so to have that support with compliance is brilliant. They also support all the paraplanning, research, and any updates from the FCA that we need to know about.

The best guidance I’ve had from Corbel is, I suppose, just going from the start of working with them to where I am now. I was allowed to have flexibility around my family when I started off when they were younger, and I’ve been able to progress and grow my own business. So, there’s been a lot of guidance along the way. I also bought a client bank, and Corbel guided me through that side of it and how that would work. They’re very happy to work with you, which is good for me.

The key advantage of being a network member rather than directly authorised is mainly getting the support of the paraplanning team, the compliance team, the directors and other advisers as well. You don’t feel like you’re just out on a limb. The industry has a lot of changes, so it’s good to have people to talk to and bounce ideas off.

I would recommend Corbel to other financial advisers and planners. I’ve been with them for 16 years, so I’ve had a lot of experience and gone through a lot of changes with Corbel, and what I would say is that they always offer you support and they want you to do well. They want your business to do well, and they offer you everything that you need in order to do that.