'I felt uncomfortable charging clients at first'

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'I felt uncomfortable charging clients at first'
Kate Woosey is the owner of Alex Financial Services

Woosey, who set up shop as part of the Quilter network two years ago following her journey through the advice firm's business school, says 'imposter syndrome' can often get in the way when advisers start out.

She says this can still be amplified for women or if someone looks particularly young.

"I think it's where a lot of people initially struggle who may not be in a ... business where they have a set fee structure already," she says. "Quilter is great in terms of outlining what you should be charging, but definitely at the start I was uncomfortable with charging.

"But now that I have been in it for a while I know the value that I'm putting in. So now I'm at the stage where I'm ready to level up," she adds.

I try and make it affordable and I definitely undercharge.

Alex FS, named after her middle name and picked due to its androgynous connotations, is a one-woman band based in Margate.

The firm provides financial planning services to clients who are predominantly self-employed and the majority of whom have never had a financial adviser.

Most of the clients originated from women's networks for self-employed people, which Woosey joined to find support herself for setting up a business. But by now the firm is growing by word of mouth and its client base is no longer exclusively female.

"I am really interested in women's wealth and having those conversations, but I didn't want to target [the firm] specifically at women because I don't want it to be a one-sided conversation," Woosey says. "But happenstance most of my clients are women and then their partners or a few men directly.

"A few of my clients now have referred me to their parents who have been underserved by their advisers in the past, so it's kind of, you know, situations where they've not seen their adviser for a few years and don't really hear anything of them."

More than just advice

Woosey likes to spend time with her clients before advising on products or services. She sees herself as much as a financial coach as an adviser, using behavioural finance techniques to understand her clients' financial patterns.

"My philosophy is try not to make it overly complicated," she says. "At the start, you know, it can be really hard for people to be thrown into a situation where they're really deep diving into their financial situation, where they might have tried to shrug it off in the past.

"I just spend time with people to understand what they want; get to know them on an individual basis is kind of how I like to think about it, but also I think there's a lot of advisers who do that already. I don't think that's particularly new."

Woosey does say, though, that advisers need to employ more soft skills to be able to identify the particular needs of each client.

Woosey sees herself as a financial coach as well as adviser, with an emphasis on behavioural finance in her practice (Carmen Reichman)

"It can't just be, 'Okay, here's your financial plan document'. It needs to be more like an ongoing conversation for some people. There's a lot of clients who are just happy with the kind of one year check-in, who don't really want to be bothered.

"But I think for some people, they just really need that handheld kind of approach, and more openness, like open banking, more visibility across every platform, every account that they have."

Woosey is currently defining her pricing strategy and is contemplating offering a longer-term service whereby she would meet her clients every month for a year, "almost like a coaching behavioural finance programme but within a financial planning sense".

She currently levies the ongoing charges Quilter recommends, such as 3 per cent for assets under management, as well as a fee for mortgage advice and commission from protection products.

It can be really hard for people to be thrown into a situation where they're really deep-diving into their financial situation.

But when it comes to time spent getting to know clients and researching their circumstances, a lot of it is under-compensated.

"I try and make it affordable and I definitely undercharge," she quips.

"There are clients who come to me and then I spend a few hours with them for free because they just want a little sounding board. So I need to be protective of my time for that.

"That's my biggest challenge: how to have a systematic pricing structure and an almost formulaic, quiet nurturing process; but also make it bespoke, because there'll be loads of different variants within what people need."

A forever career

Woosey got into financial planning after a career in marketing and PR for a design company. She says she realised when approaching the age of 30 that she needed something else in her life as a forever career.

Her father was a financial adviser and sowed the seeds by introducing her to the Quilter adviser school.

"I want to be my own boss. I really wanted to work with people, I saw there was a movement to financial feminism, which I thought was really interesting," she says.

"I was thinking now's a really good time to be talking to people essentially like me who feel like they can't access financial advice on a personal one-to-one basis but actually need it. So I took the leap and here we are, I've been a financial planner for the last two years."

In the early part of her studies she was still working alongside schooling, as were a handful of other candidates who came from outside of financial services. The majority of her fellow students were paraplanners though, or held other roles in financial services.

She is now doing further studies to become chartered through the London Institute of Banking and Finance. "I want to be the best version that I can be as an adviser," she says. Plus clients tend to trust the chartered label.

Inhibiting regulation

Woosey may have been an adviser for only two years, but she has already discovered that regulation can be "inhibiting".

"The cost is quite a lot for someone like me who's getting started, I think it's like £120 a week or something for me to be regulated. It can be an inhibitor.

"But I think, overall, I've not been in long enough to be angry, you just need to get your head around it. But I think it can be quite arduous. Sometimes I do find myself thinking I've got to spend three days a week just reading stuff and being on top of regulation."

Woosey realised that she needed something else in her life as a forever career

Quilter does have a compliance department, which softens the regulatory blow for Alex FS, but Woosey says she still likes to read the papers herself.

What is more, there is still a considerable amount of paperwork with things like suitability reports, which Woosey has evaluated as being ineffective.

"I think sometimes with clients, giving them a massive suitability report isn't what they will read or want. So, now in my business, I try and do the suitability report and then also this beautiful one page plan, like a headline sheet," she says.

The regulator will soon throw another curveball at financial advisers in the form of Sustainability Disclosure Requirements, but Woosey is prepared for this.

She says environmental, social and governance issues are "complicated, but I think it's moving in the right direction. A lot of my clients are in ESG-focused funds and I myself am ESG focused in my own investments."

Ultimately you're creating plans for your client, not trying to put your own opinion on to them.

But Woosey acknowledges greenwashing is an issue and advises to approach ESG investment opportunities "with a pinch of salt".

When it comes to raising ESG with her clients, which all Quilter advisers have to do, she says she prefers to take a softer approach.

"Asking if people want to invest in ethical funds if they're not that bothered about doing it, [can make them] feel awkward saying no.

"But [asking] are there any particular companies that you want to exclude, rather than making an ESG fund, then they'll be like, 'Okay, cool, well, I'd rather not invest in, you know, arms'. That is a bit more of a softer approach."

She also says she takes extra care to not impose her own views on clients.

"It's really important to bring it up, but you also kind of have to read the room and be like, there should be no judgement in what they're doing.

"It's my job to educate them on what their investments could be doing in a good way if they wanted to, but also, if they're not interested, then you know, that's also fine for them, because ultimately, you're creating plans for your client, not trying to put your own opinion on to them."

carmen.reichman@ft.com