Recently launched Evergreen has been built to work with newer advisers beyond just providing early-stage support.
Hayley Rabbets has joined forces with Calton CEO Tom Ham to create Evergreen, a proposition has been built to support new planners and advisers through qualification to CAS status and help them secure either employed or self-employed roles.
Rabbets, who has spent significant time working with new and transitioning advisers in her previous role as head of The Verve Foundation, said the current offerings for newer advisers usually start strong but quickly lose coherence.
"In my previous role, I started to feel frustrated - not just from bringing in lots of people, but from hearing the same frustrations echoed by breakaway advisers I was speaking to," she tells PA.
While early-stage support is often in place, Rabbets argued the pathway beyond that is far less clear.
The next stage for new advisers ‘felt broken'
"The initial support for new advisers setting up was strong, but the next stage felt broken."
Rabbets noted that breakdown manifests in practical ways, as new advisers can struggle to secure roles after qualifying, face uncertainty around achieving competency sign-off, and often encounter structural barriers when attempting to establish themselves independently.
"There were real challenges - issues with securing roles, navigating the transition after getting a diploma, and advisers trying to set up on their own within structures that weren't working," Rabbets explains.
After hearing about the recurring issues faced by new entrants, Rabbets began to question whether incremental improvements would be enough.
"I wanted to take a step back and think: how can I create something that actually fixes these problems?"
"That's when I realised - regulation is a major factor, and not something I could navigate alone."
A focus on self-employed advisers
Already leading an established business in his role at Calton, Ham had been grappling with a related challenge: how to evolve a self-employed adviser proposition that, in his words, "just wasn't resonating".
At the same time, there had been ongoing efforts within Calton to support talent internally.
"We were already supporting trainees and developing people - but it wasn't yet a fully joined-up solution," Ham shares.
When Rabbets shared her thinking, the duo said the alignment was clear.
Rather than viewing regulation as a barrier, Ham saw it as a framework within which a better model could be built.
"You physically can't do what you want to do without regulation - so the answer was to build it within a regulated environment," he explains.
Rabbets recalls the moment as a turning point. "Tom pointed out that regulation wasn't a blocker - it was something we could solve within the right structure… He said, ‘This is a great opportunity - let's do it together within the business.'"
According to Rabbets, there is a widespread misunderstanding among new entrants, who may think that getting their diploma is the "finish line".
"It's actually just the start," Rabbets emphasises.
The next step - finding a firm willing to support competency sign-off - is where many new advisers encounter difficulty, she notes.
"After that, you still need a firm to take you on and sign you off as competent—and that's where many people get stuck."
Experienced professionals can face similar challenges.
"Even experienced advisers can struggle if they've never had formal sign-off," she notes.
According to Rabbets, while firms frequently highlight the need for new talent, the infrastructure to support that talent through to full productivity is often lacking.
"We talk a lot about needing new talent, but the real issue is creating opportunities for them at the next stage," Rabbets says. "It's hard to find firms willing to invest the time and money to properly train new advisers."
‘Advisers don't want to avoid regulation'
Her response, in this case, has been to design a more integrated and supportive system - one that addresses both operational friction and early-career risk.
"Advisers don't want to avoid regulation - they just want to get on with doing their job," Rabbets says.
Both Ham and Rabbets believe that Evergreen reflects that principle.
"We've built something that's tech-focused and streamlined, to make that possible," Rabbets says.
Cost has also been a consideration, particularly for those at the start of their careers.
For advisers wishing to use the Evergreen pathway, there is a £350 a month minimum charge, but they only pay it if their revenue-based fees (pay away) do not reach that amount.
If the adviser's pay away exceeds £350, they pay nothing extra. If it is below (for example £250), the adviser would only pay the difference (£100 in that case).
"We've priced it to give people a genuine stepping stone - covering costs without creating unnecessary pressure," Rabbets says. "For new advisers, it's about giving them breathing space to get up and running."
"Our charging structure is a simple tiered percentage charge covering all costs."
Rabbets notes that a lot of networks will charge a percentage of revenue with fixed fees on top for factors like FCA fees and PI insurance, which she says "isn't always entirely clear,".
"We wanted to ensure our pricing was very transparent and fair," she says.
Despite the emphasis on support and development, Rabbets and Ham acknowledge the commercial context in which advice businesses operate.
"There's a commercial reality to advice - but that shouldn't come at the expense of doing the right thing," Ham says.
The rationale for Evergreen is long-term.
"When you invest in people properly, you get to watch them thrive - and that's what we want to scale," he said. "We want to build a business that's both commercially strong and genuinely good."
‘We're starting from a blank sheet of paper'
The initiative is positioned firmly as a long-term strategy rather than a short-term fix.
"This is a long-term play - we want to grow great advisers and build something sustainable," Tom says.
Retention, they argue, should be a by-product of culture rather than contract. "If we create the right environment, people will want to stay," he adds. "We don't rely on restrictions to retain people - we rely on creating a place they don't want to leave."
Unlike more traditional rollouts, this approach is being developed in real time, with input from the advisers themselves.
"We're starting from a blank sheet of paper and building this collaboratively with our advisers," Rabbets says.
That includes an acceptance that the early stages will involve refinement. "We're onboarding the first group now - it won't be perfect, but we'll build it together," Ham notes.
"If something's not working, we'll fix it - this is a collaborative process," Rabbets concluded. "Trust is a huge part of this - we take time to make sure it's the right fit for both sides."
