Financial planning that puts people at the centre

Sebastian Urban came to financial advice by way of product sales. He enjoyed advising people, but he wanted to plan and build solutions with his clients more independently. So he founded Urban Finance and built a practice focused on people building and structuring wealth.

Many of his clients are busy professionals who want to get their finances in order but have little time to work through the many options available. An inheritance or the sale of a business can raise the same question: what do I do with the money? Urban Finance helps structure the financial picture and plan sensible next steps.

English-speaking clients, particularly in Berlin, are an important focus. Advising them often raises additional questions: about German insurance and pension products, about existing arrangements from abroad, or about a possible move later on. Cross-border financial ties frequently call for individual research and careful coordination, for example with tax specialists.

One complete picture instead of disconnected tools

Before sabia, Sebastian worked with an assortment of programmes, spreadsheets and templates. Individual tools did particular jobs, but moving between them meant duplicated work and inconsistent data. Finding one coherent solution that also supported advising in English was especially hard.

What appealed to him about sabia was the holistic approach and its independence from any product platform. His aim is to bring client data, financial planning, investment planning and risk management together in one place, and to let advisor and client work with it together.

Sebastian also sees insurance as part of financial planning: a tool for managing risk rather than an end in itself. He worked with sabia on developing the insurance module further. What matters to him is that insurance is visible in the context of the overall plan, rather than disappearing into a separate silo.

More time for what counts

Sebastian sees room to automate more of the routine work in future, such as reading data out of documents or preparing calculations. That would leave more time for the conversations themselves: for the question of whether a plan genuinely fits someone’s situation and what they want from life.

„Good financial planning is the kind that shows a client exactly how their money makes possible the life they want.“

For Sebastian, that is the heart of good advice: working out together how money can support the life a client wants to lead.