Bryan Nicol, CFP®

Professional honours & achievements:

- Citywire South Africa Top 50 Independent Financial Advisers 2026 & 2024

- FPI Top Professional Competency Examination award 2022 (highest mark in board exams)

- Graduated first in class the PGDip in Financial Planning through Milpark

Bryan is a Certified Financial Planner® Professional and founder of Freedom Financial Planning, one of South Africa’s first flat-fee independent financial planning practices.

Before becoming a financial planner, Bryan ran a successful recruitment business. During this time, he experienced, first-hand, the shortcomings of product-focused financial advice. He started Freedom Financial Planning to help clients with their finances comprehensively and address negative perceptions of the profession.

Bryan has a passion for educating people about finance, which he does on LinkedIn and through The Enough Club podcast, co-hosted with Pieter de Villiers. As a pioneer of the flat-fee lifestyle financial planning model in South Africa, he also serves as a mentor to others in the profession.

Bryan was included in Citywire’s inaugural list of Top 50 Independent Financial Advisers in South Africa in 2024 – less than two years after leaving his family’s advice business (where he’d worked since 2017) to start Freedom. In 2026, he entered a second time and made the list again.

In 2022, he was the recipient of the Financial Planning Institute’s Top Professional Competency Examination award after achieving the highest mark in the board exams for that year. The previous year, he graduated first in class for the PGDip in Financial Planning through Milpark.

Bryan’s mission is to help clients live the lives they want to live, starting now and into retirement.