Playing 17 years at the Premiership rugby club, Newcastle Falcons, Alex Tait now helps clients manage their financial plans at Evelyn Partners – a business that appears to be building quite a reputation for supporting the sports world.

Continuing its sports connections, Evelyn Partners announced yesterday that it has hired a former pro rugby player, Alex Tait, to the financial planning team in its Newcastle office.

Switching the world of professional sports for working in the terrain of wealth planning and investment, Tait has been working as a financial planner at Professional Wealth Management in Newcastle.

Born and bred in the northeast of England, Tait made 271 appearances for Newcastle Falcons, scoring 200 points in a 17-year career with the Premiership club. He left the professional game in 2023. In his new wealth management role, he is an associate director.

“He’s something of a local sporting hero and we’ve no doubt that he’ll bring the many fine qualities he displayed as a rugby player to our team here,” managing partner David Smith said of the UK firm’s latest recruit. “Alex knows the area and its people inside out and his appointment will help us to continue delivering first-rate wealth management services to clients across the region. He was a one-club man as a sportsman and we think he will find Evelyn Partners a happy, rewarding and hopefully long-standing new home.” 

“The ambitions of this company really match my own, both in terms of its commitment to excellence and service, and its exciting new partnerships with major sporting names like Saracens Rugby Club and Manchester City Women,” Tait said. 

Evelyn Partners recently became the official wealth management partner of Manchester City Women’s Football Club and of Saracens Rugby Club, as well as launching a new partnership with Women in Football to deliver a financial education boost for females in the sport. 

In March Evelyn Partners entered a new three-year partnership with Empower Padel. Last May, Evelyn Partners announced that it was teaming up with the Alfred Dunhill Padel Classic event, held at southwest London's exclusive Hurlingham Club.

Several former professional sports figures have switched to the banking and wider financial services sphere. For example, in June, Brooks Macdonald hired Josh Lewsey, who had been a former Wasps, England and British and Irish Lions rugby player, as group strategy and corporate development officer. (He also served in the British Army.) He has worked in the professional services sector for some time, including Citigroup, PwC, EY Parthenon, and Teneo.

On a separate but related theme, here is an editorial from this publication about the intersection of sports and wealth management.