Nine years in
intelligence.
Then this.
Independent financial planner, Bath. Royal Military Police from 2017, Army intelligence from 2021. Nine years spent turning incomplete information into judgements people could act on — now applied to money.
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Intelligence work is the business of making a defensible judgement when you will never have all the facts. So is retirement planning. Nobody gets to know how markets behave, or how long you live — but the plan still has to be good enough to bet on.
An independent planner with an unusual route in.
I’m Andrew. I work with individuals and families across Bath, Bristol and the wider South West on the financial decisions that shape the next twenty years.
I joined the Army in 2017 and served nine years, first with the Royal Military Police and from 2021 in Army intelligence. I left to build a financial planning practice in Bath.
It is a less common route in. The discipline turns out to be far more similar than people expect.
Both of those roles were built on the same sequence, and it is a sequence almost nobody applies to their own money. Collect everything, including the parts that are inconvenient. Assess what it actually supports rather than what you hoped it would. Reach a judgement and write it down, with the reasoning visible and the confidence stated honestly. Then act — and revisit it when the picture changes, because it always does.
An assessment nobody can act on is worthless, however clever it is. The same is true of a financial plan.
The other habit that carries over is less comfortable, and more useful. In intelligence work you are trained to look hardest at the evidence that contradicts the answer you like. Most bad financial decisions I see are not made from stupidity. They are made because someone found one reason to do the thing they already wanted to do and stopped looking.
Collect
Everything on the table, including the pensions you have lost track of and the numbers you would rather not say out loud.
Assess
What the evidence supports, tested against the case for doing the opposite.
Judge
A written recommendation with the reasoning shown and the uncertainty stated, not buried.
Review
At least annually. A plan built on last year’s picture is a plan built on a picture that has moved.
Most clients come to me because they are tired of being sold to. They want a planner who will listen, ask the questions that actually matter, and put a written plan in front of them they can stand behind.
That is what I do. Independent. Considered. Written down. Reviewed every year.
— Andrew
The basics should not sit behind a fee.
Most people never get taught any of this. Not at school, not at work, and not by an industry that has done rather well out of the confusion. So a large part of what I write and record is free, and always will be — whether you ever become a client or not.
Long-form articles on money
Proper essays rather than blog filler: why cash quietly loses, how long a pension really needs to last, the five years before retirement, what to do when you have just inherited, and the April 2027 change that pulls pensions into your estate.
Read the articlesThree free calculators
Compound growth, the cost of waiting, and what inflation does to cash left sitting still. All free, no email required, with the assumptions and the charges shown rather than hidden — because a calculator that ignores costs is marketing, not maths.
Open the calculatorsReady for Retirement, on YouTube
Watch-along videos working through the retirement questions people actually ask, at the pace of someone thinking it through rather than someone selling something. No series to sign up to — just watch the one you need.
Watch on YouTubeThe monthly letter
One email a month. What has actually changed in tax, pensions or markets, what it means in practice, and what — if anything — is worth doing about it. No tips, no urgency, no product.
Everything in one placeA better-informed client is a better client to work with. They ask harder questions, they understand the trade-offs, and they stick to the plan when it gets uncomfortable — which is the moment that decides whether a plan works.
Six principles the practice runs on.
Independent, in fact
No product ties. No house view to defend. The recommendation is whatever the evidence in front of you points to — written down, with the reasoning shown.
Plans built around your life
The plan starts with what you actually want the next twenty years to look like. Products come last, and only when they earn their place.
Financial education, for everyone
The basics should not sit behind an advice fee. Articles, calculators and videos, written plainly and given away. The industry has gatekept this for too long.
The long view
Decades, not quarters. The plan exists to compound — quietly, consistently, with enough flex for life to keep happening.
Reviewed at least annually
Plans go stale fast. Children, careers, parents, markets — the picture moves. We sit down at least once a year and rebuild around what is true now.
Plain English, always
Jargon hides ducked decisions. Every recommendation should be explainable in the language you would use over coffee.
The credentials behind the advice.
Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning
Six papers covering the full ground of UK financial planning: investment principles, taxation, personal protection, retirement and pensions, the planning process itself, and the regulatory framework that holds it all together. It is the qualification that authorises independent advice across the work I do — and the foundation everything else is built on. I am currently working toward Chartered status.
Andrew Daw operates as part of Duchy IFA (Bath office), the South West arm of Abacus Associates.
Appointed Representative of Saltus Wealth Partnership Limited, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. FCA reference number 449607.
Independent advice across pensions, investments and protection. No in-house product bias to navigate. See the full range of services.
Verifiable on the FCA Register under Saltus Wealth Partnership Limited, FRN 449607.
Outside the practice.
I live and work in Bath.
Two hobbies, about as different as two things can look from the outside, teaching exactly the same lesson underneath. Triathlon training, building toward a full Ironman. And Old School RuneScape, which I have been playing on and off since I was a teenager and have never quite managed to stop.
One is hours on the bike, in the pool, in a pair of trainers, at six in the morning, in the rain. The other is hours patiently grinding a skill on a twenty-year-old game engine for experience points that do not exist. Neither has a shortcut. Both punish anyone looking for one.
Small, consistent inputs, repeated for long enough, compound into something you could not have built any other way. There is no version where you skip to the end.
That is the whole of it, really. It is why an Ironman is built in winter, why a 99 takes months, and why the boring pension contribution you set up at thirty-five does more for you than any clever decision you will ever make at sixty. If you have ever ground a skill to 99, you already understand compound interest better than most people who work in finance. You just have not been shown the graph yet.
Probably why both still hold my attention.
Speak with Andrew.
A complimentary 30-minute conversation, in person in Bath or by video wherever you are. No obligation. No pitch. We’ll talk about where you are now, and whether a planner is the right next step.
Arrange a conversation