A husband and wife who combined a passion for helping people protect their homes with a love for their adopted hometown of Leek are celebrating their fifth anniversary in business.
GRN Financial Services was founded by Aga and Tom Gronkiewicz in 2018 and has an office on Bath Street, in Leek town centre.
It’s also a decade since the couple began training as financial advisers – a decision sparked by their own experience of buying a home.
Aga has since become a Certified Mortgage Adviser, allowing GRN Financial Services to offer a holistic mortgage and financial protection service.
She said: “While going through the buying process, we became interested in ways of financially protecting what is the biggest commitment most people will ever have, and we realised such services are often undersold.
“Often people don’t think about insurance services, in particular the idea of income protection, which helps to ensure you have funds coming in if you can’t work due to ill health.
“We decided to investigate this further and both began training modules in 2013.”
Tom and Aga moved to the UK from Poland in 2007 and have developed a great passion for Leek.
When it came to setting up a business, they wanted to open an office in the town centre and are proud to be offering full mortgage, business and home protection services in Leek town centre.
“It was a leap of faith to move to England to build a new life for our family and a further major leap forward to set up in business,” said Aga.
“Having founded GRN in 2018, we’ve established an office in Bath Street, worked through the Covid pandemic and introduced our older son, Filip, into the family business.”
Aga is a qualified teacher and previously worked as a case worker for Staffordshire Moorlands MP Karen Bradley.
She added: “I have a passion for education and I wanted to ensure people got a financial education and good advice when considering buying a home as it’s the most important financial decision they will probably ever make.
“Tom worked in manufacturing jobs when we first came to England, but he has a passion for business and wanted the fulfilment of running a company offering sound financial advice.
“We both wanted to ground the company in Leek as we fell in love with the town, but we have clients across the UK.”