Damian Fantato speaks to advisers about how their businesses are adapting to the coronavirus crisis. Today Justin King, chartered financial planner at MFP Wealth Management, discusses the challenges for his firm.
We are only a little local firm, so there’s four of us in the office. I decided early on to isolate myself from the rest of the world because I haven’t got a spleen so I don’t want to catch this.
I am plugged into my caravan on the drive of my house and that’s where I’m living. I’ve got wifi and water and electricity. I’m not doing much family life.
Life was still relatively normal. I do a lot of triathlon training. Before the lockdown, I got out on my bike and did a mile in the sea. I could run and I could cycle. You could maintain a reasonable sense of normality on that front.
We have a trainee financial planner who was the only one going into the office - not seeing any clients, but he had been in 9 to 5. He didn’t need to be, but he decided to. He was picking up post and scanning. We use Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
We started rearranging meetings to Zoom a while ago and I think we'll be doing so for months. We are only a small business and only have 62 families we look after.
I’ve done a few calls and regular progress meetings and that’s all gone fine. Our phones are all over internet so can be handled wherever we are.
We are an assets under management business and obviously we will see a significant decline in income, but we had modelled it. We know we can survive on that basis and I am relatively happy with that.
We have only had two calls from clients worried about their portfolios because we are a proper financial planning firm.
Unless a plan has changed then the investment strategy won’t have changed.
People’s health and their food and their safety and their families safety is their priority, not their portfolio. They know there is relatively little they can do about their portfolio.
If you have drilled them in that way, this should not really cause a huge amount of distress.
damian.fantato@ft.com
