About us
Our founder, Guy Myles, shares his story of how Flying Colours came to be, and what our bright future looks like.
My story
In 2000, I co-founded Octopus Investments which went on to become a market leader in asset management with over 50,000 customers. Today, Octopus is also well known for its off-shoot business, Octopus Energy, an award-winning energy supplier.
Octopus grew successfully by working with financial advisers. For many years, I was responsible for building the relationships and helping design the investment products we offered to them. Working closely with advisers, it became obvious to me how valuable advice is, but frustratingly, this is not widely recognised.
The gap between the reality and perception of advice is the widest I’ve seen in any profession. High quality advice should pay for itself easily and improve your chances of achieving your financial goals.
But most people still see it as an unnecessary cost or even a source of risk itself. Sadly, the advice profession itself is responsible for this. Many advisers maintain high ethical and technical standards, but there have been a number of mis-selling scandals linked to advice firms, which has undermined trust in financial advisers.
I could see a clear opportunity to create a new business which would deliver high quality advice and customer service through a team of passionate and capable people.
Flying Colours
Alongside a colleague from Octopus, Jon Dominey, I founded Flying Colours in 2014 with a clear mission: to provide access to quality financial advice that helps people to understand their financial objectives and provide them with a plan to enjoy a brighter financial future.
We wanted to learn from our experience at Octopus to develop a new way of providing financial advice. A way that puts you, the client, at the centre of what we do and delivers genuine value for money. We’ve achieved this by developing a strong culture which focuses on building lasting relationships with you.
We’ve recruited highly skilled experts who are as passionate as we are about delivering our mission. Our experienced independent financial advisers are supported by a skilled operational team, and all of us are dedicated to helping you fully understand and achieve your financial goals.
We’ve invested heavily in technology by employing a team of in-house developers to create our own back-office systems. These enable us to work more efficiently so that our people can focus on what they do best: getting to know you and creating a financial plan that will help you achieve your goals.
Good investment management is the backbone of any effective financial plan, so we also have experienced investment professionals on hand to support our advisers.
Looking ahead
After years of testing, evaluating, and adapting, I’m confident that we’ve found the best strategy and operational model to achieve our mission. By working with lots of different clients, we’ve learned what we do well, where we need to bring in external expertise, and where we bring the most value.
Most importantly, we’ve found the most effective way to combine our technical expertise with our relationship-building skills. We’ll continue to invest in our people and technology to deliver exceptional financial advice, and that’s my personal promise to you.
If you like what you’ve seen so far, and you’d like to join Flying Colours, either as a client or a member of the team, please do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
Director and Group Chief Executive Officer, Flying Colours
