Jonathan Tweedie, Managing Director at RBC Brewin Dolphin, shares his journey from army officer to financial sector leader, reflecting on decision-making, trust, and adapting leadership frameworks to better serve clients. Listeners gain insight into how authentic leadership and client-centric thinking are reshaping the industry for the next generation.

Hello and welcome to The Growth Workshop Podcast with myself, Matt Best, and as ever, the wonderful Jonny Adams, and today we're joined by Jonathan Tweedie from RBC Brewin Dolphin. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome.

Hey, it's an absolute pleasure. It's good to be here, and thanks for having me on.

Wonderful and today, we're really looking forward to diving into what wealth holds for the future and some of the challenges that you see in the industry, some of the opportunities that you see in the industry. And particularly, like to unpack some of the thinking around the next generation, both from advice and for advisors. So before we do that, Jonathan, as is customary on the growth workshop podcast, we'd like to open with the first question, which is, if you had to select three people for your personal board of advisors. Who would they be and why?

This is a brilliant question. So let me start with the why to begin with. Because I think on a on a board of advisors, you you don't want familiarity. We don't want over familiarity too often. So I don't want lots of people I know really well, and I want people who will challenge each other as well as challenge me. And I want to try and fill the empty chair all the time. So the first person I would, I would put on a board of advisors is a decision making genius. And I'd use Napoleon, his ability to read and understand the situation and pivot and change and deploy, deploy expertise and strength at the point he needed to was second to none. I think he understood decision making really well. As Charlie Munger on my board, I think that if I look at expertise in my industry and sage thinking and behaviors for me, he has it all. And I like the fact that he was always slightly in the background, which is hugely helpful when I'm trying to think about somebody

who can help advise me and shape my thinking. I think he's done unfortunately he's no longer with us. I think he had an amazing career and will be thought of as one of the most influential people of the of the 21st Century, and then the last one, and I talked about familiarity, but you need trusted behaviors, and you need the people you can always go to when you when you have to make a decision. You want to you want to think and learn how to do something. So bizarrely, I'd have my grandfather there, because he would always be the voice on my shoulder that I would I would trust implicitly and know that he was only ever speaking from from the point of the point of what might be best for me. And that's really helpful to have an abort. Unfortunately, none of them are with us anymore, so Well, I have to make do without that particular board. But I love the idea of just being able to pick and choose from history, the people who you think of as brilliant.

Wonderful, and you said balance and challenge.

Yeah, all the time we spend our time trying to work out what's going to happen tomorrow, and nobody knows. The only people who know what was going to happen tomorrow are madmen and lawyers, and assuming we're not either of those, you've got to try and and use all the skills you have and all the skills available in your team to think about what tomorrow looks like, and then understand none of you are going to be right. We used to have a wonderful expression in the army, which was no plan survives contact with the enemy, and time is always your enemy. And this is, this is absolutely the case when you're trying to think about tomorrow. You can do you can plan as much as you want to, but you have to accept the moment you move into tomorrow, it changes, yeah, and you're going to have to be able to pivot, and you're going to have to be agile enough to recognize that at all times.

us a little bit about your journey to becoming Managing Director at RBC Brewin Dolphin.

Yes, it's been a, probably a really interesting career. So I began, I began, having left university, I went straight to Sandhurst and spent a year on the commissioning course of Sandhurst. By the way, if every organization could afford to spend a year just focusing its leaders on leadership you were, we'd have a very different structure. Now, I understand they can't, and I understand why the military needs to do it, but it was an amazing experience to have a year just learning how to lead in a admittedly specific environment. I then spent eight years as a soldier, including going back to Staff College, which is sort of slightly grown up Sandhurst, at the age of sort of 2829 where, again, another nine months of just pure leadership training, decision making, and some and we might come on to talk about decision making later on, but one things the army clearly taught me was to have a decision making process to make quick estimates of. And to challenge

your thinking in those estimates. So never turn up and understand what the answer is, spend your time thinking about what the question was, and then work your way through how to challenge the question so you get to an answer. And for me, that's that was a really useful skill, but so I spent first nine years of my my working career as a soldier. I then met my met my wife, and decided that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. It's a really absolute respect for everyone who does, but it is a really tough way. Yeah, when you got to kiss your kids goodbye and disappear off for six months, that wasn't that wasn't going to work for me. So I, I just rethought and went, what do I what do I want to do? And I suppose I probably fell into a very traditional stockbroking business in Edinburgh that was called bellari White, which happened to be owned by Burr and dolphin, although you'd never have known so I learned, I learned. I learned my trade as a private client

stockbroker, and then understood that as we had to transition that business from being a stockbroking business into an investment management business, into a wealth management business, you had to you had to continually refine the skills you were looking for in your people and the way you coach, developed and trained them to think about where the business was going to the future, to try and make it more relevant. I mean, private client, stockbroking was for a very bespoke and very small number of very wealthy individuals. Yeah, our problem today is, how do you how do you put into into the marketplace, accessible, trusted advice for the mass affluent, for the masses. I constantly reflect on the fact that the state and the corporate have in many respects abdicated responsibility for for the individual, and particularly for their long term retirement. People who are relying on the state are probably really going to struggle when they when they get to the point where they're

thinking about choosing to retire. And if I look at my father's generation, they would have relied on a on a corporate to do it for them, and said, Well, he's right. You get a company pension, it will look after you, and you'll be fine. They've all disappeared. You're now. Everybody is responsible for themselves, and they therefore need access to really good, trusted advice to get this right. And I think we as an industry have got to start solving this problem, and we've got to do it, not independently and on our own, but collectively and with the regulator and with the ombudsman in conjunction, so that we can, we can find ways to get to get the information into the hands of the people who need it at an affordable level, in an engaging way.

This is an interesting topic, so we've talked about leadership, your background. Obviously we'll talk about where you are in RBC Brewin Dolphin as managing director. But maybe one of the first topics is to break down some of the numbers that you're talking about there, because you're talking about access, which I hugely advocate. And think about my children, your children, maybe your children, like, what is the access currently within the market, and how is the market, or the the industry set up to serve with leading with a device, because I know organizations in the space are looking to do that be more customer centric, but there's something holding them back. And you've referenced a few things there, but start with the numbers. You know, how many people get advice? And how many people do you think that could get advice down in the future?

Yeah, how many people get advice is not as transparent as you might think. It's really hard to put a precise number on it. We think it's less than 5% of the population who get active advice. And most of the industry, and some of your your viewers, listeners, will disagree. Most of the industry is designed for the 1% Yeah, it's where the market wants to be. They want to look after the individuals with 250,000 pounds and above. That's not most people. So if I think about the regulator is trying to do this at the moment, a lot of what they're talking about targeted support is thinking about, how do you take the information that we might give to somebody as a bespoke bit of advice, yes, yeah. And put it into a marketplace to say, actually, this is probably the appropriate, appropriate behavior, but it's not a bit of advice for you...

Like a standardized framework that if you're this type of personal situation that's the context?

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's part of a solution. And then having a graded way of moving from targeted support, which is general to simplified advice to full advice, is clearly how the regulator sees it, but I tend to think of it slightly differently. I look at how my children access advice. Yes and and it terrifies me. I often, I often tell a story when I think about this, so I look after our Bruins portfolio service, which is a digital service for our business, the challenge of making that relevant to an 18 year old absolutely came home to me when, when my son turned 18 and and I sat him down, I think it's really important to have open and honest conversations about money with your children. I think they've got a much better chance of understanding the value and the power of money if you can talk to them openly about it. So on or about his 18th birthday, we sat him down and sort of said, Look, your mum and I have been saving a

bit into junior ISIS for you. This is not so you can go to university and be king of the bar. This is so that when you need to go buy your first house, you've got a decent deposit for it and and I showed him how we'd saved it into into what I think is an excellent service from from Britain's. It's a low cost tracker, it's just what you need into to build long term wealth for junior isas. And he came, and, like all 18, he sort of went, thanks, and then grunted a little bit and disappeared off to go and think about it. And he came back down about two days later and said that we have to sack these people. And I went, do you mean we have to sack them. It's just not relevant. It doesn't make any sense to me. They're not talking to me about who I am or what I'm trying to do, or even telling me what's what's in the portfolio and why it's doing stuff. It's just a holding pen. And I sat in down and went, Well, bad news is, we're not sucking the good news is, you can help me get

this better. You can help me think about how you make it relevant, how you communicate. And he started showing me a whole lot of stuff on Tiktok, effectively, the amount of unregulated advice which is flowing into the marketplace. Kim Kardashian is apparently the singly greatest financial influencer in the marketplace. And you go, This can't be right. No disrespect to Kim Kardashian and everything she has done, but trying to make sure that our advice for our next generation comes from a trusted and informed environment which does not have something to to doesn't have an ax to grind, and is not trying to persuade them to invest in any one thing, but it's trying to plan for their futures. Is where, when you get to and I think you've got to, therefore, break it down into much more manageable conversations, and you have to make it relevant to them, and you have to talk to them in a way that matters, and when we talk about the wealth transfer that it's going to happen

over the next, the next 15 or 20 years, we've got two challenges we've got to deal with. How do you engage really early on? Because it's hugely important that people engage in their journey as soon as possible, because they're going to have to save more for their for their retirement in their future, if they if they're going to accept the fact that they want to, they want to stop working at some point. But also you've got to then think about the wealth transfer, because the wealth transfer doesn't happen to 18 year olds. It happens to people my age. People are in their 50s, even 60s, when, when their parents are actually transferring wealth down. And you've got to be relevant to that generation as well. And that generation, if we're, if we're going outside of the one percenters, probably aren't used to having the sorts of conversations that you need to be able to have with them, and you need to be able to to make sure you're you're relevant. And my fear is that,

historically, people have come along and said, Look, we're the smartest people in the room. Let us tell you why you need to do this. And I don't think that's engaging enough. I don't think it's trusted enough. And I think they're the most cynical generation because of what's happened to them and because of what we've done as an industry. I mean, if you think about the behavior of our industry during my career, it doesn't read that well, no, yeah, I joined in 2001 at the almost peak of the tech bubble, just as it was beginning to burst. I spent three years where stock markets globally fell, it was a brutally deep bear market, and we were losing money for clients month after month, not because of anything we were doing wrong, just because sentiment had changed. And actually, the premise for valuing businesses had changed almost overnight, the overcapacity delivered by the first wave of funding into into the development of the World Wide Web, changed the

way that businesses operate. Hold that thought really relevant when we think about AI today, and then we recover from that, and actually markets start to recover, but we go straight into the financial crisis and the litany of constant Miss selling. Yeah. From financial institutions into into the mass market destroys trust. If you no longer trust your bank, if you no longer trust your your your lender, you are you are going to find it really difficult to think, Well, who do I go to when I need advice? And again, if I think about the mass market, when, when someone wanted advice. When I first bought my house, my very first house, what did I do? I went and spoke to a bank manager because I trusted him to go. This is this isn't what I can lend you. This is what you can afford. This is what's probably right for you to do. I think that that relationship got broken in 2008 and they don't think it's properly been rebuilt.

And what's the alternative to that relationship? You know, where do people get that advice from at the moment? Because that's where my parents would have probably gone as the bank manager. And I think through social proof, you naturally believe or trusted that individual right or wrong. But where does the next generation go for that advice? Other than Kim Kardashian, of course.

I go to Kim Kardashian for advice on a lot of things. I'm not sure. I'm not sure where I where I want to borrow money from, is probably the right answer for it. But I so. I think two things are that you are, you are seeing a more sophisticated specialist marketplace build up so really good mortgage brokers, etc, who who've stepped in and filled that void to go actually, you need to think about whole of market. You need to understand the best read through, and you need to you need to have somebody who's who's on your side, rather than on the side of the of the corporate and I think that that works really well. I think the other place that we are, we are seeing a fledgling industry develop from is is looking at financial well being and coaching for people. And I think there are some really good players operating this space at the moment. I think they're relatively small, but I think you're going to see that grow and develop.

Well as America sneezes, what do we do over here? We catch, catch the cold, absolutely. And America's been doing that for a number of years now, if not decade, is building that financial wellbeing and financial advice. You know, I look at the statistics where we work with an organization three or four years ago, in that space, it's, it's it's needed. You know, there's high levels of stress in the higher earners, high levels of stress in the lower earners, but still no access to managing that.

And I think if you can, if you can build coaching in, and if you can develop a coaching environment where people, I talk about sort of a Netflix style subscription, you don't want to charge people for access to coaching by the level of funds they're investing, I think you want to get to an environment where you can charge people a subscription to give them access to the advice they need, and you can do it entirely independently and trustedly. You're right. They've done it really well in the US. We're struggling to do it here because the regulatory environment has not been our friend here. It's getting there, but when we move really slowly in a heavily regulated industry. So we talked a little bit earlier on about targeted support and how that's coming in, and how that will help us develop this, because you can then coach without necessarily giving advice, because you can talk about the fact that people in your circumstances would normally be making

decisions like this, but you've Got to be very careful. And brands like mine are not very keen to have a conversation where they are perceived to be giving advice, unless they are actually giving advice. And targeted support should help us. Simplified advice will help us making sure that organizations pick up some of the responsibility for this as well. So rather than, rather than leaving your employees to solve all the problems for themselves, if you are a, if you're a responsible employer, giving them access to the expertise, I think, becomes part of your responsibility and should be part of your overall welfare package for your employees.

And I'm curious about where is the industry going. But if JT had a choice, where should it go? And I'm thinking more about your legacy of how you would like to leave the industry, so where it's definitely going to go, but actually, where do you want to go? And maybe just sharing those two.

So the industry, at the moment, is at a crossroads. So I think the industry is the industry will continue to focus on the high net worth and the ultra high net worth, the one percenters and above, because, because that is the environment where you can get rewarded for the advice and difference you make today, and it's the safe space to operate.

It is a demonstrable change because of the advice, because of the capital people are investing in, and therefore you can see the wider gap. So commerce capitalism is driving that.

It drives that behavior, and the regulator today drives that behavior now. I think I don't mind calling on people who doing this really well. I think the development of people like octopus money, for example, in the UK are starting to change the access model to that trusted advice, and we will see more of that over the next five years. And I think you go from the one percenters to the 25 Percenters, interesting, and that's that's a really good place to be. And as an industry, we can start feeling quite proud about doing that. And the industry needs to get used to the fact that the investment side of it is, is the hygiene factor. The investment is relatively simple to deliver, and should be relatively cost effective to deliver.

Which might be tough for people in the industry to take.

Oh its really tough being bought into the technical side. But we've, we've, we've seen this developing and again, you watch the US. It splits and goes two ways. You have here the likes of Vanguard, who are absolutely all about going, Look, we can deliver really good solutions at very low cost. And you have the other side of it, which is those people who are able to outperform by taking greater risk, predominantly in the PE in the hedge fund space, both are absolutely right. I just think the middle grounds disappeared, and that's that's going to be an interesting place, and will be an interesting debate for for the future, as to how that how we adjust our business models to cope with the fact that the middle ground may have disappeared. I really like the question about what my ideal solution looks like because I always think about, why do i Why do I do what I do? And the honest answer is, because I want to do things that I'm really proud of. I want to be able to

have conversations with my children and go we did that, we got it right, and we help solve a problem. So where do I want to where do I want to focus my energy, my passion, my ambition for for the next decade, it's about going 25% is not good enough. We need to go further. We need to go deeper. This should be accessible to almost everybody. And how you work with with government, with regulation, with industry, to get there. I think it'll be a fascinating place to be over the next decade, and I do think it's achievable, but I think you've got to be really collaborative as an industry as to how you do it, and you're going to need to operate at a governmental level to get the support to get there. But it should be. It should be in the mindset, in the ambition for for both for all of our political parties and for all of our for industry, the big banks desperately want to rebuild the relationship and trust they have with their clients.

Jonathan, this is great. We're going to hold it there for a moment. And everyone listening, please join us for part two of this discussion.