Many financial advisers “fell into” the industry and it was no different for Tom Ham, director at Calton Wealth Management.
Speaking to FT Adviser as part of our Coffee Corner series, Ham said he initially wanted to be a professional ice hockey player.
How did you go from ice hockey to financial advice?
“I played ice hockey at a reasonable level at university,” he said.
“After university, I spent a year playing ice hockey and tried to earn a living from it, but it turns out I was absolutely terrible. I wasn't good enough.”
Following this, Ham coached semi professionally for a bit with the Great Britain sledge hockey team, which is the Paralympic version of the game.
“I realised at some point that I was going to need actual food to eat,” he said.
“I got a temporary job at AXA Equitable and that was my first job in financial services.
“I was the guy who you would ring up and complain if your free DVD player hadn't arrived or you hadn't received your pen for enquiring following the adverts on TV."
Ham said after a couple of weeks, the firm offered him a permanent contract and asked if he would like to join the pensions team.
He was offered training on pensions and life insurance and was there for over two years.
After this he moved into a technical support role - which would now be a paraplanning role - for an adviser in Birmingham.
Where did you go from there?
“My first actual advising job was when I did my traineeship at Walters & Shek with a guy called Stephen Walters in Edinburgh.
Ham said he learnt a lot from Walters as he was all about "good financial planning first and investment second".
“He was a really early adopter of index funds and ETFs before RDR was even being mentioned,” Ham said.
“He was working on fixed fees and a lot of the values in my business today are taken from that time working with Walters.”
What would you say has been the biggest change in financial advice?
“Cash flow modelling,” Ham said has been the biggest change. “When I was working with Stephen, he had a 13,000 sales spreadsheet, which was the financial security forecast and it was basically what cash calc is now.
“It was great fun because that's where I learned all my Excel skills, but back then he was doing effectively cash flow modelling. Now we've got all these amazing tools to do it.”
What would you have liked more help on in the early stages of becoming an adviser?
“If I had my time again, I would have spent more time on soft skills,” he said.
“I would have been more patient and spent more time on the soft skills and I would have actively asked for supervision.”
As a young adviser, Ham said when supervisors were in the room, it made him feel awkward.
However, now he has the confidence to actively ask other people to sit in meetings and ask what they thought about where he could improve.
Ham explained that the financial planner exams are like a private pilot's licence.
“Just because you have a private pilot's licence, it doesn't make you a pilot - it just qualifies you.
“This is what my instructor told me when I was learning to fly. It's all the hours that you do post qualification where you actually learn all the different situations.”
What are the biggest challenges facing new advice business owners today?
Ham explained a lot of people talk about regulation but this is an area he is fairly comfortable with.
“We were initially appointed representatives of Sanlam but now we've been directly authorised for two years.
“The difficult bit for me is actually more around legislation and it changing every time which makes it hard to advise people with shifting sands.”
He explained in the past few years, there have been a number of changes to the lifetime allowance, talks about inheritance tax and so on, which all add to the difficulty.
What are your thoughts on diversity and inclusion in financial services?
“There's a tricky line here as you definitely don't want any negative discrimination but you've got to be really careful about positive discrimination,” he said.
“Do I sit in a room of financial planners at conferences and think we're a particularly diverse bunch? No. Does that need to change to reflect society? Absolutely.
“So how do we go about that?”
Ham said more people need to be encouraged to join the industry and argued there is an issue with certain people from certain areas or from certain backgrounds who feel that they are unable to come in.
“So first of all, we need to get some really good role models out there so you can go okay, that person looks and feels like me,” he said.
For someone who is starting out, what is the one book that you'd recommend?
“I quite like the Carl Richards book, The One Page Financial Plan and there's another one which is Around the year with Nick Murray.
“Murray’s is a diary of a year and on each page it's got a little bit of advice,” he said.
“It talks about the mindset of giving advice and the value that you bring to clients and your what not to do and things like that.
“I have not made it through a full year yet reading each day's sort of a joke on Twitter where we'll start January 1.”
What is the one thing you can't live without as an adviser?
“My phone,” Ham said. “I can run a cash flow model on here, I can speak to clients, I can do everything.
“I can run the business and if push came to shove, I could cast to the TV and I could present to you as a client.”
If the industry could improve on one thing, what do you think it should be?
“It's got to continually improve its reputation,” he said. “It's just got to.
“That includes the DNI piece, that includes good behaviours, and force for good because good financial planning is a force for good.
“People have seen the transformative effect of it on people and we're not just talking about making the rich richer here.”
If you own your own advice firm and would like to get involved with the Coffee Corner interview series, contact deputy news editor Sonia Rach via email at sonia.rach@ft.com
