Former solicitor Lisa Meller entered the world of advice after she felt she was unable to find an adviser who would be suitable for her.
Speaking to FT Adviser as part of our Coffee Corner series, the now IFA at Personal Finance Movement said she was a solicitor for six years in corporate law before she switched careers.
What made you go from that into advice as they are very different?
“Well the first time that I got into looking into my own finances was actually when I attended an event by Female Invest,” she said.
“I attended that and then received this bonus from my work. I was working in an American law firm and we were receiving annual bonuses and so receiving this bonus made me actually look for a financial adviser.”
Meller said she really struggled to find somebody who would do one off advice on a fixed fee.
“That's when I got really interested and I thought, well, why doesn't that exist?” she said.
She eventually sought financial advice but found it didn't help her that much because she felt it wasn't answering the kind of questions she had had and so she decided to spend the money on studying for DipFA instead.
“I did that and while I was studying for that, I kept attending the Female Invest events and other investing for women events and I thought, I really want to do something in this space to change this.”
As a solicitor, she said she spoke to a lot of people in corporate firms who often start earning more than £100,000 a year just after training level.
"Very early on in their careers - when people are still very young - they are earning high salaries.
“I realised that a lot of these young people didn't know that they had to file self assessments and they didn't know much at all about the tax position on pensions,” she said.
“That really motivated me to look into how I would actually go about working in the financial advice profession and so I looked at a lot of different firms, and none of them kind of aligned with my values and the things that I wanted to do.
“Eventually, somebody on my course recommended ValidPath as a network to me and so now I get to run my business exactly in the way that I want.”
That’s amazing and really great to hear you know what you want. How long did it all take?
“I started them in May 2022 and I did them over like a 12 month period while I was working,” Meller said.
After she finished them, she did her FCA application with ValidPath, and then took the summer out travelling.
“I came back and I started in October 2023,” she said.
“I set out this like very kind of detailed business plan and now I'm running my business exactly in line with that as trying to fill that sort of gap of targeting people who are younger - so below 35 often - and trying to create a space for women to come to and see a financial adviser who they can relate to.”
So what would you say is the biggest difference between when you were seeking advice and now?
“The consumer duty came into play, but to be honest, my personal opinion is that actually everyone should have adhered to those standards even before it came into play - from an ethical perspective really.
“I suppose that sort of came into play in between me applying and practising,” she said.
“In practice it didn't really make any difference because I was already thinking about all of those things anyway, but I think one of the biggest issues with the financial advice industry is that a lot of people don't trust financial advisers and that's something I've really like tried to tackle in the way that I work.”
Meller said she has “100 per cent transparency” of her fees by having them on her website for everyone to look up.
“It is quite an unusual thing to do,” she said.
“One of the other things with that is traditionally, a lot of people think that financial advisers are only for people who are very wealthy, but I've tried to kind of break that barrier by having a very low initial fee for a one off report.”
Given you recently started out, can you name one to three things that you would’ve liked more help on?
“Well only 17 per cent of approved FCA individuals are women so there's a huge lack of local women mentors as well,” she said.
“Obviously when you're starting your own business, that's like a major need so at the start, even within my network, there's quite a few women but still a lot less than men and finding the right mentor and realising that that's something that you need.”
She explained money mindsets were shaped early on - at seven years old - and from that point onwards, men and women have different language, and are presented with, different language about investing.
“So actually, it's really helpful for women to have a female financial adviser so that they can have the language that they can understand and also have somebody who has the patience and empathy to really go through the issues that they are currently facing in their lives.”
What would you say are the biggest challenges facing new business owners today?
Meller said the hardest thing when coming from the outside was establishing how to go about starting your first position in the industry.
“What happens most of the time is actually that people just join us as paraplanners,” she said.
“And unfortunately, there's loads of statistics that show that women often stay paraplanners rather than going on to become financial advisers.”
She said one of the difficulties was financing the exams, especially if starting a business from scratch as well.
“That entry point, I think, is the greatest challenge to try and break that so future generations can come in and then there can be that space to have more women enter the profession, and have a more equal gender balance in it,” she said.
“Having your own finances in order to be able to do it and having the right mentor are key.”
What’s the one thing as an adviser that you can’t live without?
“Probably Microsoft Teams,” Meller laughed. “So I do everything virtually and so I'm super reliant on all of these systems, DocuSign to sign contracts, Calendly, to schedule appointments and Microsoft teams to have my meetings.
“All of these systems as it saves tons of time for you, but also for the client.”
That’s interesting, so no in-person meetings. Do you think that raises concerns in terms of being online and the risk of scams - especially with the trust issue?
“I find that that trust issue is more about things that you actually say and how you talk to people and how you listen to people,” she said.
"What really helps us is transparency and my fees so that's one of the things that people are always concerned about. And there is a risk when you have a percentage fee, as you show the client what it will be on X amount of money, but over the years, it changes what the actual monetary amount is.”
Meller said there was a risk consumers don't know how much they actually pay and that's a concern for people, especially during the cost of living crisis.
"That's one of the issues with trust," she explained, "and the second thing is independence.
“The consumer knows you can look at the whole market so that's definitely helpful,” she added.
“Also, I do some freelance work for Female Invest as well so that helps us because a lot of my clients will be members of Female Invest and they do some coaching with them and then they actually want to go on to financial advice.”
That’s really good and nice to hear about the females getting involved. My last question is whether you have a book to recommend for anyone starting out or considering starting out in the world of financial advice?
“I actually read a book while I was studying called Reinventing The Financial Advice Profession by a guy called Paul Harper.
“I found it so fascinating because it goes through basically like the last kind of 20/30 years.”
Meller said the book explained the profession and changes that occurred but also helped to understand the background to the industry and why there's a perceived lack of trust in it.
“Especially everything was originally commissioned and there wasn't a lot of focus on the client,” she said.
“To know the background of where you're going in is just extremely helpful.”
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
