This adviser ends a busy week of client meetings with a weekend trip to Edinburgh.
Monday
The first working day of the new 2019-20 tax year and I am up early thanks to my beautiful 18-month-old daughter.
I am in work by 8am and get straight into my long list of clients who we agreed to make Isa contributions for in the new tax year. Most of the morning is taken up by trading and moving money between investment wrappers.
At lunchtime, to celebrate the new tax year, the company directors organise a staff lunch, which they kindly paid for, as a thank you for our hard work.
I have no meetings today, so in the afternoon I begin work on a pension consolidation analysis and report for a client.
The client’s existing pension arrangement is expensive and offers a limited range of investments and therefore we suggest that he consolidates this into his existing portfolio with 7IM.
Tuesday
Today was a very busy day with a number of meetings in the diary and various client emails to address – although that is much like every other day, it felt extremely overwhelming on this occasion.
Thankfully, with our office tradition of bringing in cake if it is your birthday, the sugar helped me through the day.
I also spent some time out of my day training other members of the adviser and technical support team on pension benefit crystallisation.
Wednesday
To start the day I begin work on a demo financial plan, which I am looking to use for some staff training. Cash flow forecasting is an extremely useful tool for advisers and it is important that the team are up to speed on all of the new tools that the system we use has to offer.
Mid-morning, I receive a call from a client who has been made redundant and wants to discuss her options with her redundancy package and her employment plans.
I leave the office and head home, and after putting my daughter to bed with her grandparents babysitting, my wife and I decide to go out to celebrate passing assignment two of my AF8 coursework.
Thursday
I have the nursery run on a Thursday morning, which means getting my daughter to nursery by 8am. As the nursery is located next to my office it means I am in work early to seize the day.
My diary has been blocked out for today to discuss leadership and management plans over the coming months, as well as my own adviser plan to achieve my chartered status.
Having worked for Heron House for four years, straight from university, I have one year to go before I am able to obtain my charted financial planner title, as it is a requirement to have five years’ industry experience.
I have a telephone meeting arranged with an existing client who came on board 12 months ago to discuss any changes in circumstances and to complete a review of the existing investment portfolio.
Friday
In the morning I run a training session for the advisers and our technical support team on the software updates from Prestwood Truth Software, the cash flow modelling tool.
Having recently attended a training seminar, I wanted to feed this back to the team to show them the new advancements in the systems that should help us improve our cash flow presentations and also save us a great deal of time.
I am leaving the office early today as I am going to Edinburgh for a long weekend to visit some family members. I am also hoping to watch some of the Masters Tournament as I am a keen golfer.
Liam Fowler is a financial planner at Heron House
If you would like to write a week in your life as a financial adviser, please contact: melanie.tringham@ft.com
