Career conversion: Tweed Wealth Management hails strategy of signing up former rugby pros

Tweed Wealth Management has “touched down” on a recruitment strategy of signing up former rugby stars to be trained as high-performance financial planners, saying this is helping speed up its expansion.

The Edinburgh-based company states that it now has three ex-professional rugby players on its team sheet, bringing valuable transferable skills such as teamwork and ambition. It mirrors others from the sport moving into business such as former Scotland rugby internationals David Sole and Ally Hogg.

Tweed Wealth Management added that the trio have all attended St. James’s Place Financial Adviser Academy, with former London Welsh and Ulster Rugby scrum half Paul Rowley the first to pull on the firm’s colours in 2017, and he is now a senior financial planner.

He was followed in 2018 by Michael Allen who made his professional debut for Ulster in 2011 before switching to Edinburgh in 2015, and retiring in 2017. He has made strong progress towards obtaining chartered financial planner status, Tweed Wealth Management said.

Completing the pack is Jason Baggott who started his fly-half career with the Southern Kings in his South African homeland before moving to the UK in 2015 where he spent the remainder of his playing days with Edinburgh Rugby. Alongside his rugby career he completed an economics and finance degree at Heriot-Watt University.

Tweed Wealth Management co-founder and managing director Alison Welsh said: “We’ve found that ex-professional sportspeople, and certainly rugby players, are a great fit for a career in wealth-management and we are delighted at how all three are progressing with their individual careers and adding to the professionalism of our business.

“They all work hard and are dedicated to carving out a