Amanda Browning: ‘My mother said don't go into banking - it's a man's world’

Speaking to FTAdviser, Browning, who was appointed as partner and head of wealth management at Old Mill in April, said she joined a retail bank straight after A Levels, having no idea what she wanted to do. 

“I was waiting for a place in the armed forces services and was waitressing and someone asked me if I wanted a part time job in the bank.

“I thought that sounded better than waitressing but actually it didn't pay as well so I carried on waitressing around my full time job. That was my first entrance into banking.”

Browning said she really wasn't set on services but her family were from a services background and she didn’t know what else to do.

“We have no financial services in the family,” she said. 

“It was just a cashiering job for me but actually, retail banking as it was then, had many faults in terms of it was really a sales environment that you entered into.

“But they did offer you the opportunity to take further qualifications and further yourself if you were enthusiastic and keen and I was relatively fresh out of school with very little by way of reasonable qualifications or direction.”

She explained that instead of studying at home or at college, she was able to study by herself and be supported by a company that paid for exams. 

Study days were given which she found “invaluable” and said it was a complete turning point in terms of an appetite for learning, which she hadn't found before. 

“In banking, I was very quickly able to start advising clients on simple banking arrangements, lending, things that are highly regulated now but arranged mortgages, giving people mortgage advice and life assurance and those sort of things.”

She then moved into financial planning about four years later when TSB and Lloyds merged. 

“It was a tricky move,” she said. 

“My career is dotted with people that have been inspirational informal mentors, as well as people that have tried to hold me back and prevented things from occurring. 

“It was very difficult as a young woman in banking back then. When I first got the job, my mother said, don't go into banking - it's a man's world. Find something else.”

Browning laughed but said that it was very true, stating that as a cashier, she was an “object” and it was very difficult to be seen and taken seriously. 

“You had to be a bit more assertive, and a more definite and it didn't come without some knockbacks,” she said.

“We've come a long, long way but we have a long way to go. Through education, I’d just like to think that the next generations will benefit and this will be an old wives tale.”

Ignorant or naive?

Browning explained that at the age she was at the time, she was completely ignorant to the differences and accepted it as it was. 

“It's only when you reflect back and think, gosh, how did I deal?,” she said. 

“The first obvious area for me was quite early on, and we were the group of young people being taken on by the bank,” she said.

“We were cashiers and we were then targeted with new accounts, insurances, and I was successful at this because I'm very good at talking to people.

“There were three of us, two girls, one of them's my best friend still, and the other was a guy and we all did the same job.”

She explained that she and her best friend were very good and he was very average but the first step up that came went straight to him. 

“Brave and bold that I felt at the time I went to my boss and said, 'I didn't know this job was an option, nobody mentioned it. You've put forward this guy, and for six months I have outperformed him in every possible area'.”

Browning said her boss at the time told her he didn't know I was interested and that maybe she wasn't quite ready.

“That was the pushback at that point,” she said. 

“The next time I guess was when I tried to move between being a regulated adviser doing bank assurance and mortgages into full regulated advice, which was the beginning of my career as it is now. 

“There was a job that came up and it was blocked. I was told not to apply for it. They said I wouldn't be able to move on and that I was needed in my team.”

She added: “I went to HR and one of the things my mother made me do is join a union.”

Browning spoke to the union who told her that if they can prove a business case as to why she can’t move, they can win but they can't stop her applying or going for the job.

She later applied and got the job, but when she went back to her boss, he was really cross.

“I had preempted it and I'd also gone for a job with HSBC who had also offered me the job immediately. I just said well I'm really sorry, I had a feeling you'd feel that way but I've also been offered a job elsewhere. So I'll be taking that.”

She added: “People I'd started and progressed with were moved into that regulated environment, almost like a matter of course and that was just the norm whereas women were seen very much in a support role. 

“It was difficult to break that mould despite performance, enthusiasm and energy.”

Discussing diversity and inclusion, Browning said it needs to be people that think and behave very differently to really create that environment.

“I noticed this through my recruitment, when I started managing teams and I’d left recruitment to people.

“People recruit in their own shape and form and it's a very natural human nature thing to do but I've attended various courses that helped me.

“We need to break up the thinking and the behaviour patterns that we get there. So it is nice to be conscious and aware, and I'm still completely aware that there's so much more I need to be listening, learning, thinking about.”

Old Mill move

Prior to Old Mill, Browning was at Evelyn Partners which said “was not intentional”. 

“The intention was to move to Smith and Williamson which was very much like Rathbones which is where I was before,” she said.

Browning said moving to Smith and Williamson was definitely a progression for her career as it was a move into more senior management, with a much more responsibility.

It was a relatively big team with about 48 in the office at that point, and then lockdown came and the merger with Tilney occurred.

“The major challenge began with integrating different cultures, different practices, different ways of working all into one single unified happy family,” she said.

“I was desperately trying to keep hold of the culture and the essence that we had in Smith and Williamson, and then bringing together what was then 100 people and the way we did that, so it was successful. But it took a lot of work making people meet together and of course it was all in lockdown. 

“We were fortunate to be the first office to combine out of the countries because they were on the floor below us coincidentally and so it was really rewarding.”

However, she said her role was to be divided into two and she elected to be made redundant over having her role split. 

“That was the motivation for me to go,” she said. “I was only one of five managing partners of 44 in the new merged business.

“Having been in a really nicely diversified office in Smith and Williamson where almost half of my financial planners were women - it's really rare."

sonia.rach@ft.com