"So my job is, you know, an elder statesman to a certain extent, to try and help them achieve that."
He adds: "We want to set ourselves up for success. And I think that's absolutely key. What I absolutely want to do is help the PFS and ensure members get value for money and for me that's the only reason I'm there."
Grant, who is also a qualified adviser, has worked in financial services for more than 30 years, having initially responded to an advert offering "flashing lights money", enough to convince him to leave behind his management career at McDonald's.
Having spent a couple of years as a sales manager at Providence Capital, during which his manager was replaced resulting in a change of direction for the firm, he joined an established insurer as a broker consultant in search for stability.
"And the first thing that happened to me within a month was they had a major restructure."
Having survived the restructure, several years and a few jobs later Grant ended up at St James's Place. When SJP then bought Technical Connection in 2016 he was brought in to help with the succession planning and transitioning of the support services provider into the bigger SJP firm.
Today, Technical Connection Limited runs independently of its owner and caters to the wider marketplace, while SJP has an in-house team of the same name catering to its adviser partners. Grant is a director at SJP and at Technical Connection Limited.
"What we wanted to do was to ensure that the marketplace had a place to go for technical support," he says.
Indeed, the advice market is undergoing its biggest regulatory shift since the RDR this year, in the form of the consumer duty, which took effect at the end of July.
"From our perspective, consumer duty is a massive change in regulation and what I think it will do is... it will help enhance the value of advice, it will put greater emphasis on the need to demonstrate the value of advice."
This will be particularly relevant when dealing with vulnerable clients, Grant says.
"One of the things with vulnerable clients is everyone perceives them to be the older client, the 70 or 80-year-old client; the reality is a 30-year-old with mental health issues, or someone who inherits money with no experience of investing, and all the other spectrum of vulnerability, including relationship breakdowns.
"So what you need to do is make sure that your communication is appropriate for that circumstance.
"So I think it's a good thing that consumer duty has put that emphasis on consumer understanding, and vulnerability is mentioned 109 times in the original consumer duty note, so it's a massive focus on vulnerability and I think that's a really positive aspect."
