On behalf of the team at Life Matters I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas. If, like most of us, you could use some festive cheer, please click here for a message from the team.
2020 is a year that will no doubt stand out in history. We can look back on it as a year of contrasts. We’ve admired the strength and resilience of the human spirit and have also been witness to the fragility of life. Thanks to the momentum achieved by some very smart people working towards a common goal, the most vulnerable in our society are beginning to receive vaccines. Whilst we are likely to have some challenging weeks ahead, this brings us hope for a better 2021.
Despite 2020’s best efforts to scupper our plans, it has been a year of progress and change at Life Matters. I would like to start by thanking our clients and the team for adapting so well to the changing circumstances we are dealing with. Fortunately, being a ‘cloud based’ business from the outset meant that the biggest transition to home working was not being in one location together. This made sharing thoughts and ideas along with opportunities to learn together more difficult. Nicola and Richard have been fantastic at working around that and adopting new tools to make communication easier wherever possible.
We consider it a great privilege to be able to support our clients, especially through such challenging times. Thank you for making the shift to the world of ‘Zoom’ meetings to make this possible. We miss seeing everyone, so whilst we’re happy to be flexible, will be delighted to return to a face-to-face environment when we are able to.
Having taken on our new premises on September 1st, we have been working to create the vision I’ve had in mind for many years. Our aim is to have a welcoming and comfortable environment for clients, along with the office being a great space to work in. The final elements of this are coming together in early January with some finishing touches being made to the bathroom and a new kitchen being fitted. We look forward to welcoming you as soon as we can, but in the meantime will circulate some pictures when the work has been completed.
We spent much of 2020 looking for the right person to join our team, so we are especially excited to welcome Rian Timmins who joins us as Financial Planning Analyst. Rian holds his Diploma in Financial Planning and brings valuable experience from his time working with a similar firm. When he’s not at work Rian enjoys running and is involved in rugby coaching. I know Rian is looking forward to getting to know our clients over the coming months and years.
In other news, Richard Quinn, who I know many of you will have spoken to or met, is moving into a new role as our Communications and Technical Assistant. Richard has a natural talent in marketing and design that he would like to build on and I look forward to working with Richard to create more useful and educational material in the coming months.
Our client survey was one of our highlights this year, and something we plan to do on a regular basis. We are always looking for opportunities to improve the way we work with you, to make the way we present information as clear as possible and to add value wherever we can. Your feedback is an essential contribution to this, enabling us to enhance your client experience.
Over the last 12 months we’ve introduced our My Life MattersTM portal for sharing information securely. This is the first step in what will likely be a series of enhancements we’ll make to simplify ‘the paperwork’ side of working with us. As one of our key 2020 objectives we completed an update to our cyber security policy to ensure we have done all we can to protect the data we hold. We have since been informed that we’re now well ahead of many other businesses in this respect.
We’re taking some time out to recharge our batteries ready for 2021, returning to the ‘virtual’ office on January 4th. I would also like to say a huge thank you for all your support; for introducing new clients to us, for writing great reviews on Google and VouchedFor and for giving Life Matters our reason for being. We are looking forward to working together through 2021 and beyond.