Board Digest - September 2025
Publication date:
18 September 2025
Last updated:
18 September 2025
Author(s):
Carla Brown FPFS, Chartered Financial Planner, Oakmere Wealth Management
We held our latest PFS Board meeting on Thursday 11 September. We began the meeting by ratifying some of the decisions that the Board had taken in correspondence over the summer, including to sign-off the various reports and communications associated with the PFS AGM and the planning for our National Conference. I hope that all PFS members will consider joining us for both events. As a reminder, the PFS AGM takes place on Thursday 25 September, and members will now have received several emails from our support provider, CES, inviting voting and participation. Please do take the opportunity to engage with us and help shape our future work. Our flagship National Conference is on Thursday 13 November. We’re delighted that over 1000 members have already said that they are excited to join us. If you’ve not committed so far, please do take a look at what’s on offer and register to attend.
Returning to our Board meeting, we took a report from the Executive team, considering what more we could do to align our investment in the Pathway to the Profession with the support that we will show young professionals from this autumn through the New Generation programme. It has been fantastic to see the level of interest expressed in joining both programmes. I’m delighted to report we have already had more than 230 expressions of interest to take-up the 500 free places we’re providing for new entrants to start their professional journey with the PFS. We also had 78 applications for the 10 available New Gen places. I’m delighted to say that, in response to this demand and the quality of applications submitted, we’ve decided to expand the programme to 20 places this year.
The next agenda items covered nominations for the PFS President and Vice President for 2026 and a renewed PFS vision and mission. I’ll say more about these at the PFS AGM.
We took the latest finance report and proposals exploring how we might invest our substantial reserves, which the Board asked to be prepared in advance of the meeting. I am pleased to say that we have decided to freeze PFS membership fees for a fifth consecutive year. In doing so, we noted that we will continue to take these decisions on a year-by-year basis. We will formally notify members of this decision in coming weeks. We also agreed a long-term investment strategy, to ensure the reserves we continue to hold are generating a healthy return while remaining available for use as the Board identifies opportunities that would otherwise benefit members over time.
We concluded our meeting by receiving an update on the CII Group’s Professional Pathways work, which is a transformative initiative designed to modernise and enhance the CII’s approach to qualifications. We also heard about initial plans for PFS events in 2026 and beyond. We are very aware that we need to ensure that we hold events where members can most easily access them in person, which might lead us to duplicate some of the great opportunities that we make available each year. We’ll provide more details on our plans over coming months.
Our next PFS Board meeting will be held on 17 November. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing as many of you as can make it in person and virtually to our AGM.
Carla Brown
PFS Board Chair and PFS President
