Many advisers fell into the profession of financial planning and this was the same for Shannon Currie, director at Perceptive Planning.
Speaking to FTAdviser as part of our Coffee Corner series, Currie said she had an unorthodox landing in to financial advice as she didn’t grow up knowing that was what she wanted to do.
How did you actually become an adviser?
“I was over here backpacking, and because I'd worked in a vehicle insurance company in South Africa - I did some temp work for a firm in Chelmsford,” she said.
“They actually had a pensions department, a car insurance, short term insurance department, and investments and the investments chap needed some help and it was going to be working weekends.
“I was backpacking there so it was right up my street and I said of course I can help you.”
Currie said she spent two or three weekends helping the firm move everything across to Crest.
It was a discretionary investment firm so they had to get together all the of what the clients held to make sure that the certificates matched their holdings.
“I clearly showed perhaps some of the details that you need for something like that so in actual fact, that chap arranged for me to transfer from car insurance to the investment side, and it just went from there,” she said.
“He put me through all my different CII exams and the IMC since it was a DFM and I was the director within two years.
“I joined them on the basis that I'll work for you, nice salary and then I'm going off travelling and I just never left.”
It's amazing it actually made you want to stay. From then until now, what would you say has been the biggest change?
Currie explained that being a financial adviser is the perfect job for somebody who loves people and numbers.
“We all love a spreadsheet or at least the geeks amongst us because spreadsheets have a convention and a set of rules and nowadays, they tell you when you've got something wrong with the formula, which is quite fantastic,” she said.
The firm she was working with at the time was a discretionary investment financial adviser and had client bank accounts, individual cash management accounts.
“My boss at the time just had a fantastic view of dealing with clients so I was very lucky that the whole thing of fees did not frighten me in the same way when RDR came along,” she said.
“Of course platforms then started to look like what we'd been doing behind the scenes so for me.”
She added: “The joy, for me, which has been one of the biggest changes is now when I go to any form of industry event, I see women which is quite wonderful.
“I don't normally make a big thing of women but it was often I was the only person or perhaps only one other and that for me has been lovely. That really has been a quiet revolution but it's been quite fantastic.”
Is there anything you would have liked more help or advice when you first started out?
Currie said in the early stages of starting out, she was extremely lucky to be surrounded by a really good number of advisers or planners who wanted nothing more but to help you.
“If I was giving advice now I'd say go find those people you admire and just approach them,” she said.
“Just say I’d love a chat. I speak for those who I stand on the shoulders of giants. They absolutely love to be able to input and help.
“Definitely call upon people around you - you don't even need to know them but you'd be amazed how many people would be willing to stand for and and just have a telephone conversation or meet up.”
“I was very lucky in that sense that people did that for me.”
For new business owners starting out today, do you have any tips or tricks?
Currie explained that one of the key things when starting out is confidence, particularly for women and particularly when engaging with the banking sector to get loans.
“I now recognise that wild horses would have not dragged me into a bank to apply for a loan.
“I would rather have gone without in order to fund the start-up so having that confidence is really, really important.”
When it comes to diversity in general, Currie pleaded to say to the industry, “please could we have some more.”
She said as an industry, people just need to reach out.
“I'm really concerned that if you're not careful, you pull the ladder up behind you,” she said.
“And if you're not there to be able to answer and help people.”
She explained that everybody's going to do their journey differently but as long as they know that there is somebody out there who's saying, if you need help, reach out, its important.
“I do get very concerned about when we use this whole thing of female or diversity that we potentially pigeonhole people so I am worried about that when I see it spoken of but just more action would be quite fantastic.
“Let's get on with it. Let's do what we can.”
Lastly, what book would you recommend to anyone starting out as a financial adviser?
“Where are all the customers' yachts? By Fred Schwed,” she said.
“There's actually millions of books I can recommend bt that was fairly seminal when I first started out.”
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
