Kate Gannon has been sworn in as the new President of the Personal Finance Society (PFS).
She was appointed President at the latest PFS board meeting in July, having previously served as vice president of the society.
Ms Gannon is the founder of Themis Wealth Management in Cornwall. She is a Chartered Financial Planner and Fellow of the PFS. She has been a director of the PFS board since February 2025.
Outgoing PFS President Carla Brown will remain chair of the PFS board.
Ms Gannon said: “I am truly honoured to serve as PFS President. It has been a career-long ambition and I do not take on the role lightly. I look forward to spending the next year working with all our PFS members to unlock potential, create opportunity and help even more people see what they can achieve in this brilliant profession that has personally given me so much.”
Penguin Wealth Planners’ managing director Craig Palfrey has been appointed vice president of the PFS, having joined the board in March 2025.
He has been a Certified Financial Planner since 2007, and is also a Chartered Wealth Manager. He is a long-standing education champion for the PFS.
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The latest membership figures (for the end of 2025) were revealed in the PFS's Annual Report for 2025 published earlier this month.
The report showed membership numbers fell almost 2,000 in the past year from 38,703 in 2024 to 36,807 at the end of 2025.
It is understood that the membership decline has in part been blamed on a large number of members retiring following the Consumer Duty introduction. The figures are also believed to reflect a plateauing in adviser numbers across the profession, as seen in FCA data recently which showed a 15% drop in adviser firm numbers since 2021, although the FCA said that the number of advisers overall had remained steady at 31,000.
The PFS has been troubled by many changes to its board in the past few years. Trevor Edwards, the CII’s group finance director, left the board of the PFS in August 2025 after less than a year in the role.
Former PFS vice-president Daniel Williams, along with member director Ben Wright, resigned from the board in May 2025. Mr Williams, who had been on the board for less than two years, said he resigned over, “concerns about the culture and structure of the Personal Finance Society.” Mr Wright, who spent just over a year as a director, accused the PFS board of lacking, "independence and clarity of purpose."
PFS interim chief executive Don MacIntyre stepped down from his role in November 2024. His two years in charge saw him face a challenging time as head of the organisation and the role remains to be filled although two new PFS executive directors have been recruited.
The PFS is the Financial Planning-focused sister organisation to the London-based professional body Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). The PFS says it aims to drive professional standards in the financial advice and associated sectors and is the largest professional body for Financial Planners in the UK.